'Making' Skitarii

Hello Veeky Forums, after years of lurking I'm going to bite the bullet and purchase the Skitarii 'Start Collecting' box and start really getting into 40K.

Only a minor issue. I'm hugely into the idea of 'Your Dudes' and being as new as I am I'm unsure how much of that I can actually do with Skitarii and Admech without fucking up the lore.

Do I make up a unique forgeworld and color scheme? Do I name specific units? Can Skitarii even HAVE personality? Plenty of these feel like obvious questions but I would very much appreciate the help here Veeky Forums.

TL;DR: How do I make Skitarii & Admech 'my dudes' without fucking up?

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1d4chan.org/wiki/Skitarii_Army_Creation_Table
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You can make up your own forge world and colour scheme, sure.

As for Skitarii having personality -- yes, but by necessity they're pretty dogmatic and zealous with regards to the strictures of the machine cult. Their commanding techpriests, however, can override their emotional impulses through the noospheric link through which they also receive their orders.

>Do I name specific units?
Sure. 40k has a lot of 'xyz pattern noun'.
>HAVE personality
Depends on what you mean. Any given forgbworld's management, resources, and situation likely heavily shape the way it approaches war, it's capabilities, and it's preferred tactics, including the way it equips and modifies it's soldiers.

The battlefields your dudes tend to be deployed to, the methods they employ, the sorts of equipment your forgbworld has access too. Is it a new forgbworld? An old one? What are the ranking Magos's like? Does the force world specialise? How orthodox are they viz a viz Omnisian Cult? Do they work a lot with Space Marines, or Rogue Traders? Do they have a long history of fighting tech-heresy, or do they have a reputation for skirting the edge of acceptability? Do they quickly adapt their equipment to their enemy, or are they ponderous and industrial in their approach to warfare? Do they have any specific treaties with local planets? Do they harbour grudges against any local Xeno factions? Do your tech priests strongly venerate any specific sort of technology or school of thought?

All good answers in this thread. Some Skitarii squad leaders maintain a small portion of self initiative, and when they use it in the field, it didn't loose the mission.
Generally though, Skitarii are meant to be faceless, replaceable, and numerous. The vehicles are what you want to your dudes with. If you bring in an enginseer, his servitors could be his personally crafted ones, as well.

>Skitarii are meant to be faceless, replaceable, and numerous
Exactly. That's their general theme. But are they cold, analytical terminators, or murderous berserker kill bots? How are they employed? Are your commander's all 'Beep boop send in the next wave' or hyperintelligent machine-enhaced tactical geniuses?

There's a guy who used to post in the WIP and 40k threads with his arctic Mechanicus army and it was pretty tits. Had its own story and color scheme.

OP here, just got home and on the PC and I'd like to thank y'all, these are really good answers.

These are all really good questions I need to answer actually, gives me a list of all the bases I should cover when designing my forge world. This helps a shit ton user.

Cold, analytical terminators with a fragment of Humanity and a few doses of religious zeal are the norm, but by no means the standard. The best way to consider the Mechanicus is that while they supress their emotions under the clarity of the machine, they tend to retain their core consciousness, which is exaggerated without the noise of other processes, a really angry Human might seem even more spiteful as a Techpriest, because even though his anger is dulled there's no other emotion he can notably express, for example. This is where you have to consider what Your Mechanicus Dudes differ from everyone else, when they lost part of their Humanity, what did they hold onto, and what became their norm?

It's funny that the skitarri are one of the only factions of 40k that works with a herohammer only-the-leader-character-matters story as opposed to regiments doing shit but they get like no focus at all beyond their army books.

Skitarii are dogmatic and utterly loyal, but remember that every Skitarius is a bespoke work of technology.

Their level op independence and personality depends on the forge world and their creator. However, thing that are listed in the codex, like common augments and utter loyalty to their tech-priests is a shared thing.

Regarding names, some use fancy sounding human names, but some work uses a Delta-Rho-Kappa system, so just some weird faux-greek serial codes.

The one thing you need to remember about the mechanicus that in their general state of being they are considered very alien. The rest of the imperium has trouble understanding their motivations and values. However, prime human characteristics like pride, vanity, spite is something that is still very much a part of their personality.

Here you go OP

1d4chan.org/wiki/Skitarii_Army_Creation_Table

Because of their lack of personal personality (which doesnt seem to make sense, but kinda does) they can be anything you really want them to be.
You can turn them into greygarden style, given personalities based on whatever by their magos
You can make them into horatio, as every skitarii has its personality made into a copy of the original magos, and their faces made the same
You can have them be souless beep-boops who have no feelings and are "Squad 827, 965 and 211 have all be wiped out, reinforce"
They're the perfect Your Dudes, because they are anything you want. They're programmable to be anything you want

Admech and Mechanicum are very easy to do Your Dudes with, since every Forge World is different so you can quite literally pick a tech level and society.
Here's the lore for my Mechanicum in the Horus Heresy, but it would work equally well for a fleet-based Skitarii army, and you can still be individual with characters if you want.

They're the evolution of a Xanatite Explorator fleet, who were out of the Imperium's territory when the Heresy broke out. After the first planet they came to shot at them for being Reductor ships (who were mostly Loyalist) and the second for them being Xanatite (traitors) they decided fuck it and returned to a cushy system they'd found in their trip. Fast warp lane through a couple fiddly sectors, but an easy trip for Mechanicum precision. They set up on a planet with a whole bunch of greenery, started mining the asteroid belts and steadily assimilated the planet, using their already large number of Magos Biologis to turn the local flora and fauna into war machines. The Archmagos in charge, Xander Treides, is largely a massive cogitator bank spread throughout his fleet, and sends out copies of himself in custom bodies to lead expeditions whenever required. If he "dies", he's obviously still fine, but he loses the data that body was carrying, and his mind gets steadily more corrupted by interference and such every time, so he slowly goes a bit mad. Eventually, late into the Scouring, he realises what's happening to him and locks the useful parts of his mind into the ship, losing his memories in the process. He takes over subordinate's minds and uses their memories and perspectives, which has led to strange command strategy as he commands with the biases of anything between a great Archimandrite and a Skitarii Alpha Primus, each taking prominence as required.

W8 4 8th M8

I am waiting for the 8th edition for codexes, but should I wait longer?

For anything else I mean. Derp.

Might be a good idea, although you could always assemble some test models and do some painting.

Vanguard and Rangers are sure to return, however you might want to wait until you know for certain how you'd want to equip your alphas and specialists

I'm trying to make some your dudes necroids and figure this is a good place to ask.

I'm trying to get some background for fluff on them. Only book I've read with skelegates yet is Fall of Damnos, and I don't actually know if the Necrons we're depicted or nucrons, the leader constructs had some personality,but they were still pretty much BEEP BOOP kill everyone so maybe they were oldcrons?
Is the double cup dynasty fluffy enough for a SW killteam? I already ordered purple toobs for the Gauss flayers, and I can envision a monolith in all purple with an appropriately sized styrofoam double cup affixed at it's Apex.
The syrup-sippin' assassins
Codeine constructs
Promethazine praetorians
Maybe if I wrote some fluff for the muddy boiz? During the long sleep a cryptek spilt his lean all over the controls and the Necrons that awoke we're slower than normal, befuddled by a "chopping and screwing" of their normal protocols and possessed by a spirit much more "pimp" than the avg necron.
Is there anything fluffwise that could compel a necron dynasty to sip lean? Also I should probably paint his flayer black parts white to mimic styrofoam

OOH OOH I CAN HELP
Anything less than a lord is beep boop. Lords and similar ranks (Crypteks for example) still mantain intelligence. NOBODY has actual emotions. Just memories of emotions.
Now if you wanted some cool "Your guys" you could absolutely have a lord trying to place intelligence into those without it. But remember, a key piece of Necron lore is that nobody has a soul. They are only machines, and at best reflections of what they used to be.
So there could be absolutely one trying to create souls. Now if they can actually do is another matter entirely....but with a God of Death it just might be possible.

Squads have the same name, so all units in squad Delta-57 would be identified as Delta-57, at least if they're still like the old Mechanicum's foot soldiers.
They can have a personality, they aren't lobotomised like servitors, you'd probably want to ally Cult Mechanicus with them, so your tech priests would have names, which would be [Rank(probably dominus or adept, maybe Magos if you want)] [NAME], an example being Adept Zeth from Mechanicum, or Magos Tayber from Cain's last stand. If you really want to "your dudes" it, do your own forge world.
On the personality front once again, Skitarii aren't programmed to follow orders, they feel compelled to as though they are the will of the Omnissiah, receiving them directly from orbit.

What about immortals?

That said, it doesnt have to be so. Your tomb world could have a crazy cryptek who technobabble handwave powers gave them the simulation of emotions or took them away from everyone. Its pretty versatile fluff, even if it didnt communicate that very well. As long as you dont go too far, making them human level, you can do pretty much anything.

Do you think I'll have any issues with the 8th Ed having (or / ) listed on unit sheets if I go my dudes?
Do most people just piggyback their dudes off an established dynasty for benefits? We're there benefits to picking a specific dynasty prior to 8thed?

This is a new thing, so there wasnt a previous benefit. Just steal someone else's dynasty benefits that matches your dudes best, same as people were doing for chapters in 7th

Thx for the help, still torn between a few factions but Necrons are what caught my eye when I went into a GW as a kid and I thought the monolith+assload of warriors looked badass. Tracking info says my immortals/deathmarks are in so I should have some dudes to work on tonight!

Heres how to push you over the line

Oh man I'm sold

I understand this isn't a "rat3 mAh guyzz" thread but given feedback from this thread I found myself inspired and wrote up a first draft for the lore of my Skitarii. What do y'all think?


The Distant Yila system was never an important one in the Imperial Machine, consisting of little more than a cluster of asteroid mines and a shockingly nondescript Agri-World by the name of 'Coldbrook' The world had been lagging behind in it's tithe of foodstuffs for little under a century by now, and as conditions on the planet worsened due to a mix of natural causes and pollution brought on by Imperial Occupation a techpriest by the name of Daevos took notice.
Always wanting for more recognition, the fame hungry priest sought and received the rights to begin the titanic effort to convert the increasingly worthless Agri-World into a Forge-World. The Peasants were conscripted into the workforce, and their culture thoroughly suppressed by the occupying force.

Years stretched into centuries as the freshly minted Magos of the planet turned it's once rolling fields into sprawling factories and massive forges. Progress marched smoothly and steadily, even as a Warp Storm rolled into the system. The Storm was not a surprise, and had been tracked steadily as it came thundering towards Coldbrook. This could not have come at a more inconvenient time for Daevos, who had made plans to tap into the mantle of the world to create a system of huge magma forges underneath the crust.
His fellows in the priesthood wanted to hold the construction of the magma forges until the storm had past, given the terrifyingly delicate nature of the process. Waiting for the storm to pass however, would take over a century of waiting. And Daevos would have none of it.

Continued next post.

Pulling rank, he demanded the construction go ahead despite increasingly panicked warnings from his brothers and sisters. And at first the project went without a hitch and soon the panic faded. A scant two decades of work later, the Storm produced what was quite possibly the worst possible thing for a world undergoing such a delicate project.

A massive space hulk harbouring an Ork Waaagh.
With nought but a few hours in the way of warning, the burgeoning forge-world was struck by the massive vessel, many of the freshly constructed magma forges collapsing violently. The world spasmed, huge amounts of magma, ash, and superheated stone was blasted into the atmosphere, choking out all light and turning once fresh air into a horrific miasma of toxic and choking gasses.
The world was in no way prepared for an invasion on such a scale, and conditions worsened by the Ash-Storms that had become a way of life on the world. The Orks robust vitals left them more or less unaffected aside for issues of visibilityl. The same could not be said for the Mechanicus. While a few of their number had since removed their lungs or modified their respitory system the majority had not, rampant augmentation being low on the priorities of the conversion project.
As the Orks rampaged across the world and more and more of the workforce and priesthood succumbed the nightmarish conditions, Daevos found a smoldering, brutal determination in the Chaos. His normally cool demeanor shattered he marched screaming through the halls, beginning work on his plan to save what he saw as his lifes work.

Continued next post.

Peasants, Priests, and Skitarii alike were put to the scalpel, having their noses, mouths, lungs, and all other aspects of their respiratory system torn out and replaced with a dependable array of filters, tubing, and rebreathing apparatus. It was not long before the population of the planet had sealed their faces away beneath an army of implanted masks. Peasants who had once openly resented the priesthood witnessed their salvation firsthand, and embraced the way of the Omnissiah, with thousands of survivors willingly offering themselves up
for use as cogs in the machine. With a newly minted force of Skitarii, Servitors and freshly minted Tech-Priests Daevos set to the task of taking his world back from the greenskins. Decades of brutal fighting bred a new breed of warriors, and gave way to a new culture. The denizens of Coldbrook now looked to the blessings of the Omnissiah for everything. Their children grew in controlled enviroments, having their bodies being torn apart and redesigned became a coming-of-age ceremony, breathing itself became a gift from the Machine God.
The Skitarii forces took to the radical changes of their home with an all-consuming fervor. Blinding smoke and obscuring ash became a cloak they hid within. Volcanic lightning, once a lethal hazard became another force for the Machine God to control. Rivers of Magma were redirected and used in the construction of massive networks of trenches and tunnels. The world was consumed in a ceaseless battle between the rapid adaptation of the Ork body and the Innovations brought from the human mind.

Finished next post.

And by the time the Warboss of the Greenskins was butchered by Ruststalkers it had become apparent which was the greater force. Cloaks and Augmentations burned by and caked in volcanic ash, the Skitarii and their commanding techpriests modified their heraldry and uniforms to reflect their achievements. And Daevos, now Archmagos of Coldbrook looked out at the hellish landscape, to the great maniples of Ashen Skitarii, to the legions of fanatic converts to the Omnissiah, to armies of servitors marching into the depths to begin the reconstruction and repair of
the magma forges, he looked out at it all with a corpse like smile hidden beneath a silver mask.

OP, I run a custom Skitarii forge scheme and backstory, it's pretty easy to do. When you get the Codex it'll provide examples with different canon forge worlds, so you can use those as inspiration. The personality of your dudes should generally reflect the personality of their Magos, and their Magos should probably reflect their Forge World culture.

But I want to dissent to the whole "Skitarii have little to no individuality" consensus in this thread. The codex certainly implies that for the overwhelming majority of basic infantry, but as with everything AdMech it's basically dependent on the ranking Magos, and constrained by the mess of previous canon. In the Graham McNeil Forges of Mars trilogy, individual Skitarii privates are literally alcoholic faggots. 100% serious on that. In "Mechanicum" the Skitarii character clearly has had his mind re-coded to optimize him for Holy Crusade, but he also cares a great deal for his new friends and even cracks a joke at one point (to all the characters' surprise). The Codex tried, I think, to exaggerate grim-darkness that was not - and need not - be there. Don't let that constrain you, OP, give Private XK Telov-33 a hobby and a girlfriend if you like.

Pretty good story actually. The most controversial part is that the Imperium would not casually allow the Adeptus Mechanicus to take over one of its planets. They're on the same side now, but 10,000 years ago they were merely allies and the Imperium limited the expansion of the Mechanicum* to not much more than the planets that Mars had originally settled. Especially if the planet is behind on its tithes - that'll get it noticed by the Munitorum and Inquisition. I'd get rid of that tithe thing and just have the planet already be under the influence or even be a supplier of the nearby forge world that Daevos came from.

This guy's right, Skitarii have been shown to have personalities before. Read Titanicus for an example.

*as it was known back then - becoming an Adeptus basically means being given a seat among the High Lords of Terra, and that happened during the Horus Heresy

Thanks for the feedback!