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I'm running a campaign in Necromunda and there's a grey area that I need to clarify. I've realized it would be great (almost necessary really) to incorporate a lot more of a Mechanicus presence in the campaign, but...it seems that the Mechanicus just doesn't actually have much of a presence below the Spire where all the nobles live. Or at least, I seem to recall reading that in the House of Artifice book.

I have not succeeded in really finding out any more lore on the subject of the Mechanicus' presence on Necromunda, and especially on who makes all the craaaazy stuff on the world that isn't just furnace plates (Goliaths), chems (Escher), and ultra-high tech barely anyone has or uses (Van Saar). Obviously Delaque/Orlock/outcasts/guilders don't seem to contribute much in the way of 'finished products' to the hive, nor would the Enforcers/Squats.

And there is a LOT more on Necromunda than just those few kinds of things. Servitors are all over the place. Wild machinery and cables and wiring and all sorts of mad constructions are rife. Gamma-Thane 67 from Necromunda Hired Gun seems like an absolute enigma (https://hiredgun.fandom.com/wiki/Gamma-Thane_67).

So if the Mechanicus aren't really present who makes the servitors on Necromunda, and wild creations like Gamma-Thane 67? Are Mechanicus a lot more prolific on the world than I've been led to believe, or is there some other organization out there that is doing more than I am aware of?

There are usually a number of smaller factions with some engineering skills that exist beneath the admech. Somewhere right below the skill and expertise of an eginseer. The Arbites are like this where most worlds will have a local police force and an arbites office above them. I imagine these technicians and artisans are either handed select pieces of technical lore or it's picked up through close experience. These layman would take their small piece of secret knowledge and bring it to lower levels of the hive. Maybe they think the black market will have less laws and taxes.

IIRC 'proper' Tech-priests don't leave the Eye of Selene.
I'd assume if a doc can fit a bionic eye or lobo chip they're able to turn someone into a servitor, as unpleasant as it might be.

Lexicanum wrote:Cogitator Core Servitor - A forbidden form of Servitor used by House Van Saar on Necromunda. They are produced by taking the Cogitator systems from Necromunda's many monitoring and regulating systems and splicing them into a standard Servitor brain.

A Hive World will have conclaves of Mechanicus, just as it’ll have conclaves of the Ecclesiarchy.

Normally the really mental stuff is the preserve of a Forgeworld. But most, if not all but the most feral and backward of Imperial Worlds will have a Mechanicus contingent, to tend to whatever works and gubbins there might be, or at least to provide qualified oversight of native Enginseers etc.

We see a snippet of this in one of the Cain books, where someone who later becomes a fully fledged Tech-Priest started out essentially as semi-ordained Grease Monkey.

It’s a safe extrapolation that the more complex things remain the preserve of the Priesthood. Whether creating Servitors is especially complex? Who knows. Combat Servitors yes. But Luggers and those installed at stations to perform repetitive tasks, maybe (probably?) not.

Adding to good points above, lay techmen can probably handle the grisly work of servitorization on an industrial scale without tech-priesthood oversight, at least for the more simple kinds of servitors.

Agree with the above. Further to what has been said, Imperial STC-based tech appears to be black-box tech.

Consider the analogy of, say, Apple devices. An individual Apple device is easy enough for someone to use within its design parameters. It connects in a straightforward manner to other Apple devices. You don't need to be an Apple technician to use and set up the devices. Even the manufacture of the devices is going to occur on a largely-automated production line where most of the staff can do very specific tasks in construction and don't have an in-depth understanding of how the device functions on the whole.

But suppose an Apple device breaks? It is very difficult to repair. Suppose you want to alter the function of a device to something possible with the hardware but not supported by an existing app? Again, very difficult without specialist knowledge. Most users don't really understand how their devices actually work, only how to use them.

STC tech appears to be very similar for the most part- the gear is made on standardised production lines and is straightforward to use within its design parameters. Some items are easy to maintain within their design parameters. But if the wrong thing breaks? You need a function that isn't in the default settings? You are out of luck unless there is a specialist available. The Adeptus Mechanicus gatekeeps this knowledge at the high end, so you have to go through them for all but the most basic out-of-parameter repairs and modifications (the latter may constitute tech-heresy).

On Necromunda, they have all the tech in place to produce the stuff, so any required Ad Mech involvement is going to be small for fixing major defects. Machine artisans can manage the rest without understanding how the devices they are maintaining actually work. Imperial tech appears to be incredibly durable compared to most modern tech, so I'd be surprised if techpriests never visited the foundries, but they won't need to do it often.

The Artisans will still have some Ad-Mech oversight, at least those in the Spire and Main Hive. Making sure the correct unguents are applied with the correct prayers, the appropriate holy spanner is used for the right nuts and bolts.

And they will have their own internal structure, up to whatever passes for an Arch-Magos of the planet, each with their own diocese, areas of expertise and authorisations.

The top of that pyramid needn’t be an especially senior Priest within the Mechanicus though. I mean, they may be, but different planets will have a different need etc.

But that structure will be there, and will almost certainly have some form of bodyguard of Skitarii etc. Again not necessarily the fancier stuff, but a garrison of some kind on hand to defend the Priests, their charges and their Shrines as need be.

But on Servitors specifically? Their use is so widespread I can’t see the conversion process being especially exotic within the general Imperium. The bits and bobs can be recycled as each fleshy bit wears out, and entirely new units could be made fresh on planets with the right tech level, and/or imported from local Forgeworlds.

This would hold true down to even Agri-Worlds. Someone is maintaining the harvesters, and making sure no xeno-tech is being adopted. Even if it’s just a single Enginseer (a very low level Tech Priest, tasked with simple maintenance and repair) with authorisation to train locals for the super basic stuff. Think real world changing a tyre or shutting off water at the stopcock. Things anyone with a DIY book can reasonably achieve with minimal to zero risk of them blowing up their house. In 40K? That could extend to making a Servitor, depending how, aha, plug and play the bits and bobs are. But for the actual, correct lobotomy bit? Yeah you’re almost certainly going to need a Magos Biologis for that bit, or at least a journeyman on that particular mystery of the Omnissiah.

Given how common servitors are in the Imperium, I would expect anybody with moderate medical expertise and the necessary parts can make a servitor.

So all of this is quite fascinating... I think we're all basically saying that yes, on the whole it is actually still Mechanicus doing this - but it might be some lower version of them who extends their control/oversight/whatever form that might take to lesser, 'common-men' locals.

That makes sense, I just wish there was something to distinguish between this sort of thing and Mechanicus; I like how Grotsnik/etc. said 'Artisans' like it's some designation. I wish there was something like that in canon!

AHA...I found that old entry in the House of Artifice book. Apparently on page 6 it talks about how Van Saar has taken over a lot of high tech stuff, "Over millennia of toil, the clans empire has grown and spread across Necromunda to control the majority of the world's sophisticated technologies and its electro-promethium power production."

Then later it goes on to say, "While the subjects of Necromunda are taught to adhere to the dogma of the Machine God to make their factories function and their production lines run, when they fail, the Van Saar are never far away, while the adepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus are seldom seen below the wall." Again I believe that 'Wall' is what divides the main 'Hive City and the upper 'Spire'.

So I think you all are getting to that grey area here, about whose shoulder, exactly, are the Van Saar looking over? If it's largely NOT mechanicus, who is it? Artisans? I suppose that's the answer; just generic tech-savvy types, who have no collective title, or even a category. All of regular-ish guys, in turn, stuck between whatever tech-priests or enginseers might be technically lording over them with their holy censers and what not, then when they all have their backs turned, they work with the Van Saar to actually get things done.

Though again, I have a very hard time seeing Van Saar, directly, 90%+ of the time, just lording over some servitor factory and pressing the 'Make Person into Servitor' button again and again...and everything else that just vomits tech all over the place like every other Imperial planet, ofc (I am mostly interested in the bigger picture with this thread, not just servitors).

So I guess that's my take on it; it's a hugely varied means of technical application across the hives as to who these 'little people' are, but essentially you have the Van Saar looking from off to the side, waiting for the Mechanicus to turn their backs to do the work, and probably working more with the 'little people', and fading away when the Mechanicus get too curious.

Would love to hear any counter-arguments to this though, if anyone has any?

The Cain books also mention Lay-priests of the Mechanicus and the artisan class. He makes booby traps out of what we would probably class today as either DIY supplies or trade supplies. Blowtorches and plumbing supplies basically. There are also a couple of artisans that he picks up that help with maintenance of some stuff who are also explicitly described as going on to become lay-preists. So they can do a lot of the low level stuff, but who are not formally ordained into the Mechanicus.

The Wall on Necromunda delineates Uphive from the Underhive.

All the legitimate industry tends to be Uphive. It’s still not a pleasant place, but it is where the majority of the populace live, work and die.

The Underhive are the mankier bits. The post-industrial decay levels where stuff can still be made, but in an awful environment. They do still contribute to the Tithe of course, but they’re a lower priority compared to the levels above.

Hence Van Saar are your local Mr Fixit.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Wall on Necromunda delineates Uphive from the Underhive.

All the legitimate industry tends to be Uphive. It’s still not a pleasant place, but it is where the majority of the populace live, work and die.

The Underhive are the mankier bits. The post-industrial decay levels where stuff can still be made, but in an awful environment. They do still contribute to the Tithe of course, but they’re a lower priority compared to the levels above.

Hence Van Saar are your local Mr Fixit.

I thought The Wall seperated the spire from the hive, so between noble and clan houses. Not between hive and underhive.

Wall is Hive/Underhive. Though it could well be both.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wall is Hive/Underhive. Though it could well be both.

Has this changed? Lexicanum states the following, which tallies with what I remembered (the Lexicanum source is the old lore from before the N17 reboot which I am more familiar with). Emphasis mine:

Lexicanum wrote:The Wall

Separating the Spire from the Hive City itself is The Wall, a large adamantium barrier.[4b] Passage between the Spire and the Hive City is carefully controlled through heavy gateways.[4b]
Hive City

The Hive City is five miles in height and home to billions of people.[4b]
Underhive

Below the Hive City is the more polluted, violent and lawless Underhive. No constant or definite border separates the Underhive from the main hive city. Fighting between the gangs of rival Houses is mostly confined to this level of the hive.

Edit: this seemed to be very deliberate lore in the past- the Nobles were safely sequestered from the consequences of their actions by The Wall, whereas poorly-performing and/or unfortunate hive sections near the bottom could find themselves slipping into the lawlessness of the underhive and vice versa. It created a sort of competitive boundary to the underhive and also made it permeable for malcontents to move downwards and for violence to bubble upwards. It would be a shame if a second wall was retconned in to shutter off the underhive.

I remember Gangs retired “over the wall” when they hit a certain rating.

I could be misremembering.

I'm not versed in the official lore well enough, but I'd speculate that by no means are all servitors created equal. Mechanicum-created Servitors are probably much more advanced than everything else. So while its not impossible for many individuals to possess the skills and tech required for Servitorization, the results they can come up with will vary a great deal. Heck, I could even envision scrapyards filled to the brim with barely working Servitors, some of which get "recycled" into new service models, scawenged for parts and whatnot. Would probably be a great place for a young mind to learn about medicine and basic technology in fact!

We see cyber augmented body parts in the lore all the time. Surely this tech isnt something only limited to the Mechanicus. If you can replace an arm with major arteries in it, and not have the implant recipient die on the operating table (or die from infection/MRSA), chances are you could also pull off a Servitorization job of some sort. The end result doesn't have to know calculus or reading/writing, as long as it can pick up stuff and carry it around, so what if it wets itself and has trouble keeping balance, job's a good un

IIRC, the video game Rogue Trader has being made into a servitor as a possible punishment for crimes. Assuming that's accurate lore, then it's likely that the courts have the capability.

I suspect that the Mechanicum involvement is in the fact that certain parts (such as the cogitators) can only be manufactured by the AM. But if the parts are available, then the Mechanicum might not be required to be involved in each and every surgery. Following that idea, a Forge World might produce vast quantities of the parts, which are then loaded onto a ship bound for Necromunda. When the ship arrives, the parts are unloaded and sold to any and all parties who are interested in them and can afford them. Those parties are then responsible for making certain that there's someone available who has the knowledge needed to perform the surgery.

This is always what I've remembered about "the Wall" (see the middle left of the image)

https://imgur.com/a/udiKjKd

But yeah I think I've heard of another 'wall' in Hive Primus too, and it might separate the underhive/hive idk. But to me that will always be a 'lesser' wall lol.

I think Mad Doc Grotsnik said it best, that you really would need a Magos Biologis for the interfacing part of the servitor. That's the sticking point, really. Van Saar are the only other ones I can think of who actually might do that...but it's almost a disgusting thought that they'd lower themselves *that* much to do it lol.


EDIT 5/5/24: Didn't want to necro the thread but...this has been right under my nose this whole time, flitting past my eyes and I missed it entirely.
There's a Racket in the Book of Judgement called Proxies of the Omnissiah. No big deal by title, but I had to share the description (Book of Judgement page 81):
"The Tech-Priests of the Machine God watch the industrial enclaves of Necromunda with a careful eye - not only does its hives produce many sacred machines, but secrets of lost technological lore lie buried in their depths."
^I think this implies less than a passing, high level interest - and far more of a hands-on approach. So even if there is a relatively small presence, there *definitely* is some presence. So yeah, I'm sure they *could* oversee servitor production and things like that. My impression is that Van Saar handle some servitor creation, Mechanicus handles the rest. As to which does more, who is to say? Plus it could change from time to time.

Van Saar in approach aren’t really that different to the Ad Mech.

They’re not massively keen on sharing their knowledge. They both slept massive doses of radiation as part and parcel. And whilst the Gangs as we can field them are specialised, I see now reason why non-combat members might specialise in marrying metal to flesh, from bionics to Servitors.

I doubt that basic servitors require a Biologis adept to make, although the more complex components are probably produced on Biologis-"designed" production lines.

Given the commoness of bionics, I reckon most medical personnel are capable of fitting low-grade cybernetics, although the outcome may not be too pretty. Probably the components (even the lobotomy chips) are mostly "plug-and-play" given the level of tech exhibited by the Imperium.

I wouldn't be surprised if the components automatically sought out the adjacent nerves to mesh with, with an "acceptable" mismatch rate resulting in frequent errors and odd quirks when they mesh to the wrong nerve(s) etc. A Biologis adept could probably guide such a process manually for more reliable effects, but that would take specialist skill and equipment.

I’m sure there would be an ad mech presence on Necromunda.

They probably have much bigger concerns than creating servitors. I imagine that components come from STCs and are fairly plug and play - anaesthetic optional

 Haighus wrote:
I doubt that basic servitors require a Biologis adept to make, although the more complex components are probably produced on Biologis-"designed" production lines.

Given the commoness of bionics, I reckon most medical personnel are capable of fitting low-grade cybernetics, although the outcome may not be too pretty. Probably the components (even the lobotomy chips) are mostly "plug-and-play" given the level of tech exhibited by the Imperium.

I wouldn't be surprised if the components automatically sought out the adjacent nerves to mesh with, with an "acceptable" mismatch rate resulting in frequent errors and odd quirks when they mesh to the wrong nerve(s) etc. A Biologis adept could probably guide such a process manually for more reliable effects, but that would take specialist skill and equipment.

Depends how far we take the General Ignorance of the setting.

Even plug and play involves putting the right connector in the right place. As I’m sure anyone who has worked in IT support has met more than their fair share of modern humans who make that mistake.

So, yes. Whatever it is that makes a Servitor a Servitor could be relatively plug and play (and I stress that remains an assumption, mostly for sake of argument), you’d still need to know how to pop open someone’s melon, and which bits of the grey squishy thing in front of you is hooked up to which cable, spikey flat bit etc.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
I doubt that basic servitors require a Biologis adept to make, although the more complex components are probably produced on Biologis-"designed" production lines.

Given the commoness of bionics, I reckon most medical personnel are capable of fitting low-grade cybernetics, although the outcome may not be too pretty. Probably the components (even the lobotomy chips) are mostly "plug-and-play" given the level of tech exhibited by the Imperium.

I wouldn't be surprised if the components automatically sought out the adjacent nerves to mesh with, with an "acceptable" mismatch rate resulting in frequent errors and odd quirks when they mesh to the wrong nerve(s) etc. A Biologis adept could probably guide such a process manually for more reliable effects, but that would take specialist skill and equipment.

Depends how far we take the General Ignorance of the setting.

Even plug and play involves putting the right connector in the right place. As I’m sure anyone who has worked in IT support has met more than their fair share of modern humans who make that mistake.

So, yes. Whatever it is that makes a Servitor a Servitor could be relatively plug and play (and I stress that remains an assumption, mostly for sake of argument), you’d still need to know how to pop open someone’s melon, and which bits of the grey squishy thing in front of you is hooked up to which cable, spikey flat bit etc.

Sure, but I reckon that should be fairly common knowledge for medical personnel on any world above a feudal level of tech. I'm not saying any joe on the street could do it, but medical personnel definitely exist on Necromunda, there are even rogue docs in the underhive.

For reference, right now a functioning neurological device can be inserted to restore certain kinds of hearing loss. If all you need to do is fix the device to the correct area and it (usually) burrows into the correct nerves, then that would be doable by a typical surgeon versed in the area. An alternative would be a (relatively commonplace) bit of tech that does the nerve-knitting for you once you oppose the device up to the correct anatomical region, but isn't inherent to the device.

Given the frequency of bionic replacements, something makes them easy to fit. I highly doubt they are all fitted by Ad Mech adepts given the sheer numbers of cybernetics and servitors in the Imperium.

Edit: actually, doesn't a medicae fit some kind of cybernetics to Eisenhorn or one of his retainers?

Edit 2: some relevant quotes:

Multiple neural injuries afflicted my system, many of which would never repair. Augmeticists from the battlefleet's Officio Medicalis conducted microsurgery on shredded nerve transmitters in my spine, thorax, brainstem and throat. They implanted more than sixty sections of artificial nerve fibre and ganglions.

The Imperial Navy, at least, can probably fit augmetics with direct Mechanicus involvement, they have "augmeticists". Could be mechanicus adepts, but the suggestion is they are not.

Clearly very old, his eyes, nose and ears had been replaced with augmetic implants:
primitive, functional devices finished in boiler-metal black that probably had been handcrafted for him by the locomotive's devoted engineers. Even his teeth, framed by a spectacular white tile beard, were cast iron. His name was Alivander Suko, and I later discovered that he had been master of the Trans-Atenate Express for three hundred and seventy-eight years.

This suggests simple augmetics are pretty available for artisans on developed Imperial worlds. However, "engineers" could refer to mechanicus adepts, although I'd expect enginseers to be used.

Crezia had been obliged to shave my head in order to implant the cluster of neural and synaptic cables that would drive the augmetic frame around my legs. She had been upset all through the implant procedure. It really was terribly crude, even by basic Imperial standards. But out in the middle of nowhere at all, it had been the best she and Antribus could cobble together.
...
..the back of my skull was raw, sore and clotted with the multiple implant jacks of the
sub-spine feeds my faithful medicaes had installed to make my leg frame work. The steel-jacketed cables sprouted from my scalp and ran down my back into the lumbar servo of the walking brace.

The bunched cables were flesh-stapled to my back, like a neat, augmetic ponytail.

This is the passage I was thinking of. Eisenhorn's augmetic rig was implanted by medicaes in field conditions.