Dark Mechanicum - Maltek Incarna: Not all Chaos rituals are matters of what might be considered "pure Warpcraft." There also exists a dark and forbidden strain of technological lore which deals in the manipulation of the Warp long proscribed by the Adeptus Mechanicus.This corrupted science lurks as a nightmarish shadow that perverts the empirical understanding of the universe with the insane Maltek Incarna of the Dark Mechanicum. Such Incarna, though blessedly rare, are every bit as dangerous as a Chaos Sorcerer's summonings and often far more insidious, able to corrupt signals, possess circuits, mutate metal, and sunder physical laws in terrifying patterns.Goleph - The Golephic Heresy was discovered by the Ordos Calixis in 419.M41 when the forces of Inquisitor Embuleos, prosecuting Mechanicus Renegades, were ravaged by faceless machine assassins built in the form of Humans. Inhumanly clever, fast, and silent, the machines stalked their victims by sound and heat-radiance before slaughtering them with ancient Power Weapons. Though at great cost, Embuleos was ultimately triumphant and discovered enough in the Heretek ruins to put a name to these echoes of the Dark Age of Technology: Golephs. The Mechanicus Calixis are nothing if not secretive, and the iron wall of silence hides much from the greater Imperium. Golephic Heresy has a long history within the Calixian Machine Cult; it seduces those who seek a path to the Silica Animus, the Man-Machine that stands one step closer to the Omnissiah's glory. Heretek-hunters of the Divine Light of Sollex Cult have destroyed Golephs and the Magi who created them uncounted times in the millennia since the Angevinian era—but Golephic patterns and forbidden lore persist in labyrinthine Mechanicus data-repositories. All of this is hidden from the uninitiated, but some few in the Holy Ordos understand. One Radical coven believes Golephs to be children of the lost machine-men of Amun’an Morrus, birthed from decaying mind patterns and unhallowed tech-designs obtained during the Angevin Crusade. Amun’an Morrus is a cursed world -- its inhabitants sold their souls and their humanity to the machine, discarding flesh for armour and minds for cogitators. They were put to the sword by the Lord-Militant Angevin in 540.M39, and Amun’an Morrus was burned in the Emperor’s Fire and stricken from the star-charts, such was the abhorrence its machine civilization inspired. Certainly, the Goleph frame looks little like an Imperial tech-pattern. A Goleph's limbs are smooth and long, the human-sized body sleek and the head featureless; its outer shell betrays no sign or noise of the mechanisms within. Even Golephic hereteks have little knowledge of the origins of their forbidden lore. They toil in ignorance upon Goleph mind-pattern devices, seeking secrets of the Man-Machine within this dangerous archeotech. A Goleph machine is cast in the pattern of a man, is cunning as a man, and can hate as only a man can -- an active Goleph is an unrestrained murderer. To establish control, early hereteks crafted Golephic Keys, devices designed to communicate crude sigils of instruction and castigate disobedience by disruption of mind-pathways. A punished Goleph gives every appearance of torment—thrashing and writhing in silence, and then moved to sullen obedience or careful misinterpretation of sigils. A Goleph newly raised from safe storage in a stasis field is malevolent in aspect, pausing to weigh obedience to sigil-instructions against an attempt to slaughter its masters and destroy its Key.Slinnar War Machine - Speculation and false information surrounds the plasma-driven constructs dubbed Slinnar War Machines. As their name implies, their origins appear to lie at the spinward edge of the Jericho Reach, in the stellar body known as the Slinnar Drift. Even their link to this proto-star cluster is tenuous, based on little more than whispered stories and an observation that the emission frequency of the War Machines’ cores resembles that of celestial bodies in the Slinnar Drift. What is unerringly agreed upon is that a Slinnar War Machine is an engine of destruction, given life through the sacrifice of a human soul. Although a War Machine is similar in size and shape to a Stealth Suit or power armour, they hold no living pilot. Instead, ancient transference rites must be used to imbue the machine with the soul that becomes its pilot. While operational, a Slinnar War Machine pulses with the light and heat of a star captured in an obsidian cage. This energy can be unleashed in short but incredibly potent bursts. These blasts appear similar to the discharge of a plasma weapon, but contain enough energy to breach nearly any material with minimal diminishment of the beam. The exact amount of time a transferred life can power the construct is unknown. Speculation ranges from a few years, to a normal human lifespan and beyond. It is certain that War Machines expire eventually, as the possession rituals necessary to activate one have an easily documented aftermath. Many die attempting this dangerous ritual, although the aid of a practitioner versed in both the technological and the arcane can improve the chances of success and survival. Even beyond this risk, the nature of Slinnar War Machines is a matter of some debate within the Inquisition and fringe groups of Explorators. Many argue that in order to function, the soul transfer must involve some manner of forbidden warp-circuitry, but others counter with force swords as an example of an orthodox parallel. This camp—which includes the Crucible Resolviate— is not so eager to condemn the Slinnar War Machines, and would greatly like to acquire one for study. They dismiss as unfounded rumours claims that the War Machine’s own alien spirit eventually overtakes that of the possessor. The War Machine’s reputation is little improved by the desperate and ruthless individuals usually driven to occupy one. Most often these devices are acquired by zealous rebels or powerhungry criminals. Few sane men would ever choose to undergo the possession rites. Although a Slinnar War Machine does offer immense power, it comes only at the high price of one’s humanity. War Machines have no voice, and anyone or anything the possessor ever loved is now beyond its burning touch.Bronze Malifect - A Bronze Malifect is a profane device that appears as an ugly arrangement of bronze augmetic limbs infused with a murderous spirit of the Warp. This malefic machine was the result of a strange tech-heresy that gripped the Josian Reach Sub-sector of the Calixis Sector in the latter half of the 8th Century of the 41st Millennium. The Augmetic Scholae, Tech-priests who built and maintained cybernetic devices, became Warp-tainted in many diverse locations. The Hereteks built malformed machine altars and conducted corruptions of Mechanicus rituals. They succumbed to madness and mind-rust, engraved screeds of Warp-nonsense across every surface, and toiled upon twisted devices. The bronze autolimbs are plasma-welded together such that the mass is joined into one large device, capable of articulation and movement. When active and infused with the power of the Warp, a Malifect moves rapidly with purpose and malignant intent. The daemon-spirit within guides the machine beast and senses terrified victims through unknown means—the malifect incorporates no ocular components or processing devices capable of initiating movement. It is the Warp alone, clothed in metal, hungry for death and pain, that motivates the device.Maletek Stalker - A Maletek Stalker is the chosen assassin and favoured agent of the outlawed and malign Phaenonite faction of the Inquisition. The Maletek Stalker is a living fusion of murderous skill, profane technology and the power of the Warp. These dark weapons given form are nightmarish shadows that serve only the Phaenonite cause, sowing terror and death among the faction’s enemies, and by their very diabolic nature epitomise the horror and malice of the Phaenonite doctrine. Maletek Stalkers are built rather than made. First, the Phaenonites select a trained killer of consummate ability from the ranks of their tried and tested servants. This candidate must also be of considerable mental and physical fortitude to stand a chance of surviving the process, and the Phaenonites have long known that a body and soul that has already felt the touch of Chaos is likely to yield the best results. The candidate is then taken by the sect’s Dark Magos and Hereteks and subjected to a series of nightmarish occult rituals and a grueling series of cybernetic and bionic implants. Not all those chosen survive the Hereteks' attentions, but those that do are profoundly transformed, their killing powers drastically augmented and possessed of a daemon’s taste for slaughter. The Potentia Coil powering the Maletek Stalker's implants is known as a Maltek Warp Coil, a dark fusion of ancient technology and occult science, engraved with dark runes and suffused with the energies of the Warp. As a result, a Stalker's implants may "heal" on their own if damaged just as normal flesh would, slowly re-knitting and repairing themselves (he may not be healed by first aid, only by the Stalker’s natural healing and talents). The Stalker's augmetics are twisted mockeries of those gifted to the Machine Cult’s priesthood, attuned and powered by the malefic energies of the Warp, which suffuse the Stalker’s body with unnatural vigour. These systems react more like flesh than metal, and thanks to the malign power that courses through them can even heal when damaged, and have been seen to scar and weep steaming blood, and may even "evolve" as time progresses to better reflect the dark soul within. The most potent and terrible effect of the Stalker's Maltek implants, however, is to allow the assassin to feed on the lives taken to bolster his own, ultimately acquiring an unnatural hunger for murder even the Phaenonites find hard to control.Schismaticals - Within the depths of ancient Cogitator cores of the infotombs of the mighty infotemples of the Lathe Mechanicus world of Hadd, lurk malign data spirits (artificial intelligence routines) known as Schismaticals. A Schismatical is a memory–cloud of suppressed ideas, an archive of heretical data that should have been destroyed, a folio of vile plans and whispers that has acquired forbidden volitional urges. It incorporates data–patterns by which other Machine Spirits can be rapidly corrupted into echoes of itself, and so the predatory Schismatical awaits the one unlucky Machine Spirit trespasser that it consumes and supplants so as to bear it to the Forge World above. Once free, a Schismatical rampantly converts an army of Machine Spirits to its cause. It creates machine covens populated by its echoes, each of which is an independent Schismatical in its own right.