Sidon Protocols - Inception: Those Knight Households that remained in contact with one of the far-flung Forge Worlds of the Martian Cult during the Age of Strife have most often fallen into a symbiotic relationship with their patron, receiving technological and spiritual guidance from the Magos, while themselves acted as a potent shield for the Forge World. Many Forge Worlds might have faded from history during the Age of Strife were it not for the tireless efforts of the Knight Households bound to their service. Such a joining of the cold logic of the Mechanicum and the impassioned zeal of the more typical Knight Houses led to many widely varying oaths. Most common among these oaths is the form that has come to be known as the Sidon Protocols, a complex web of obligations and duties that bind both House and Forge in a dangerous accord, whose tangled precepts can easily lead to the loss of any semblance of independence for a Knight Household that fails to uphold the protocols.Amongst the more well known rights provided by the Sidon Protocols is the right of the Household to bear the symbol of the Opus Machina, or Cog Mechanicum, the cog wheel-set skull, as part of their panoply of arms. This is both a sign that they carry with them the authority of Mars and the Cult Mechanicus, as well as a mark of their duty as part of the Taghmata of their patron. This also serves to set them apart from their Imperial-aligned brethren, though both took upon themselves the title of Questoris and joined the Expeditionary Fleets of the Great Crusade, the mark of the Opus Machina showed that ultimately they owed allegiance to the Mechanicum and the ambitions of their patron Forge World and not to the Emperor of Mankind. This subtle distinction led to some strife amongst the armies of the Great Crusade, and led to those Households pledged to the Mechanicum gaining a sometimes misleading reputation for untrustworthiness amongst Imperial Commanders. Matters were to become worse during the dark years of the Age of the Horus Heresy as Mechanicum-bound Households, true to their oaths, sided with their patron Forge Worlds for the Traitor Warmaster Horus and against their Emperor to become part of the Dark Mechanicum.The Sidon Protocols also allow the Forge World to assign an Archmagos Prelate to the homeworld of the Household. Ostensibly, the Prelate is somewhat akin to the Executor Fetial found amongst the Legions of the Collegia Titanica, a diplomat between House and Forge who functions as an advisor and observer within the Household, seeing both to the well-being of its Knights and the training of its Sacristans, but in some cases stands as a quiet tyrant behind the throne of the Household's master. The Prelate also functions as a link between the scions of the Households and the amorphous structure of the Forge World's Taghmata. To the Household he is a representative of the Forge World, but within the constantly fluctuating network of prestige and alliances that is the Mechanicum Taghmata system, he is the representative of the Household. Considering the military power of a Knight Household, such a position brings great influence to the Archmagos Prelate, and many a Household has become inadvertently enmeshed in the intricate plots of a Forge World's Synod of Magi as its members vie for the position.The majority of the remaining common precepts within the Sidon Protocols deal with the interplay of House and Forge; with the numbers and types of armours to be supplied and the conditions and duration of a Household's service under the banner of the Taghmata. It is this co-dependency, the exchange of irreplaceable machinery of war for trained and seasoned warriors whose skills are superior to those of brute robotic Automata, that binds the two disparate organisations together. Such a close relationship has led to many Households developing curious hybrid cultures, often retaining much of the independent nature of their neo-feudal origins but alongside often bizarre interpretations of their patron's brand of the Cult of the Omnissiah, much to the consternation of the Archmagos Prelate.