Servitor Manufactorum struggles to meet increased tithe quotas post-Rift... Tech Heresy ensues

This post explores some which lore which provides an interesting insight into how the emergence of the Great Rift has placed massive strain on the Imperium's resources and logisitics, via the case study of a Servitor factory - the Pakthertius Manufactorum - on the Forgeworld of Avacharus in the Gilead System, with has found itself in Imperium Nihilus.

The context:

Once, the Pakthertius Manufactorum provided a vital output of quality Servitors, augmetically enhanced mind-wiped humans prized for crucial labour and myriad other uses in the Gilead System. But now the manufactorum has fallen silent. There is no sign of life from the outside, and heavily armed Servitors prevent all but the most determined from entering.

...

Just like the rest of Humanity, the Pakthertius Manufactorum suffered greatly in the wake of the Great Rift. Cut off from the rest of the Imperium, and facing wars on all fronts, the manufactorum was met with increased demands for its primary export — Servitors. But as quotas grew and the manufactorum failed to meet them time and time again, the facility’s leader, Magos Ferro, became desperate. Tricked into utilising Heretek scrapcode, she birthed a parasitic sentience that called itself ‘Ignis Avem’. The heretical creation was capable of controlling the entire manufactorum with diabolical efficiency, ensuring the Administratum’s near-impossible tithes were met. But when investigators discovered the nature of their newfound productivity, they attempted to dismantle Ignis Avem.

Wrath & Glory: Litanies of the Lost (2021), p. 100-01.

And we are provided with a nice timeline of events leading up to the shutdown of the factory:

9.290.000.PM (Post Maledictum)

3 Years Before Incident: In the wake of the Great Rift, and with the increased demand for combatready units, the Administratum orders an increase in the volume of Servitors required to satisfy the Gilead System’s Imperial Tithe. The weight of this demand falls largely on the Pakthertius Manufactorum, located on the planet of Avachrus in the city of Belaxia. The manufactorum will require a 237% output increase just to meet these new demands.

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2.5 Years Before Incident: By lengthening work shifts, an aggressive increase of automation and an huge uptake in the number of prisoners used as biological material, the manufactorum’s output levels slowly climb towards the lofty goals.

9.298.001.PM

2 Years Before Incident: Pakthertius’s servitor output reaches the required 237% increase. This is met with celebration by the local Imperial citizens and Administratum personnel hold up the Pakthertius Manufactorum as an inspiration to all, a sign of what Humanity can do even in its darkest time.

9.802.001.PM

18 Months Before Incident: Several high-profile accidents take place at the manufactorum. Numerous key members of the senior staff lose their lives as a result. This devastates morale and marks a downward curve in productivity. Magos Ermintrude Ferro is assigned control of the manufactorum after the previous leader, Magos Griegus Sterm, is lost in one of these accidents.

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15 Months Before Incident: Magos Ferro logs an official request for additional aid from both the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Administratum. Her official record states that without replacements for the skilled labourers lost in the accidents, the manufactorum will not be able to function efficiently. In lieu of aid, she requests that the tithe be lowered until the manufactorum can train replacements. Both requests are denied on account of the ongoing conflicts in the Gilead System. She is instructed to find a way to solve the problem, no matter the cost.

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12 Months Before Incident: The number of accidents and fatal injuries within the manufactorum increase by over 460%. Skilled workers bleed from the manufactorium at an unsustainable rate, through burnout, psychotic meltdown, physical injury, or death. Output drops beneath the levels seen before the increased tithe. Pressure from the Administratum reaches an all-time high.

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11 Months Before Incident: A Heretek known only as the ‘Code Broker’ approaches Magos Ferro in private. Disguised as an Explorator of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Code Broker offers Magos Ferro a solution to their problem: an incredibly complex bio-mechanical interface that would allow one Tech-Priest to control countless local machine spirits by linking them with their subconscious.

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10 Months Before Incident: Magos Ferro gathers her senior Adepts in private and proposes her radical solution to increasing productivity. An advanced network of minor Machine Spirits could be installed throughout the manufactorum. These would all be controlled by a single Magos, with their subconscious controlling the Machine Spirits in the same way that a body controls its own organs. Despite objections from a number of the senior staff, tests are approved due to a lack of alternatives.

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6 Months Before Incident: A test Machine Spirit network is developed and implemented in a limited portion of the manufactorum. The initial tests are a remarkable success. An entire assembly line is automated under Magos Ferro’s control alone. Magos Ferro names this system ‘Ignis Avem’ and signs off on an urgent Manufactorum-wide implementation of the network.

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3 Months Before Incident: Ignis Avem is connected to every system in the manufactorum, slaving every Machine Spirit in the facility to its command. Magos Ferro takes control of the manufactorum, and Servitor output increases to an incredible 581% within six days.

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2.5 Months Before Incident: Magos Ferro begins to notice several automated experiments and procedures taking place within the manufactorum without her intention. She registers these as minor anomalies, a side effect of her own subconscious desires to improve production.

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2 Months Before Incident: Both the Administratum and the Adeptus Mechanicus take a keen interest in the sudden output surge and launch simultaneous investigations into the Pakthertius Manufactorum. Filled with bitterness at their lack of support and certain that the Administratum will simply increase the tithe above a reasonable level should her methods be discovered, Magos Ferro sets out to keep Ignis Avem a secret from the Investigation. She moves her research and Ignis Avem’s central system to a secret basement level.

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1 Month Before Incident: Despite Magos Ferro’s stalling, the truth of Ignis Avem is revealed to the Adeptus Mechanicus and Administratum investigators. The Administratum investigator, Lothar Skuult, demands that all research on the system is handed over as an invaluable asset to be used in other manufactoria. Meanwhile, the Adeptus Mechanicus investigator, Magos Albus Bast, finds traces of the Heretek code and accuses Magos Ferro of heresy. Feeling threatened, Magos Ferro’s subconscious triggers Ignis Avem, but a system malfunction prevents Ferro’s higher brain functions from issuing commands. Ignis Avem comes online and registers all personnel as a threat, in the same way a body reacts to an infectious virus. Ignis Avem seizes control of the manufactorum and enters lockdown. It slaves every Servitor and piece of technology it can and turns them against all biological personnel.

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2 Weeks Before Incident: The lockdown ceases all productivity and communications cannot be re-established with any of the investigation teams. The area surrounding the manufactorum is quarantined. Civilians are evacuated from the surrounding area.

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Nine Days Before Incident: A number of lower-class civilians are reported missing. Rumours spread of unusual Servitors dragging unsuspecting victims into the maze of waste and service tunnels beneath the city of Belaxia.

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Six Days Before Incident: Local Enforcers subdue a Servitor in the process of kidnapping a family of three. Upon investigation, it is identified as originating from the Pakthertius Manufactorum. A squadron of Enforcers, under instruction from the Lord Governor to resolve the situation and bring the perpetrators to justice immediately, force their way inside the manufactorum. Contact with the squadron is lost within minutes of them breaching the facility. No further contact is made.

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Five Days Before Incident: With no contact from the Enforcers, a squad of Skitarii Rangers enter the facility. Intelligible contact with the squad is lost within moments, though one of the Ranger’s Vox unit continues to broadcast a shrieking, incomprehensible stream of binary for six hours until it ceases.

9.314.003.PM

Day of the Incident: The Administratum and Adeptus Mechanicus escalate the incident and request specialist help in beginning a swift and effective resolution.

Wrath & Glory: Litanies of the Lost, p. 102-03.

So, apart from being an interesting story and setting up a nice rolepaying scenario, what do these events show us that is of note?

• There is an interesting dynamic at play here between the Adminstratum and the Ad Mech, as the former is able to demand tithes from a Manufactora on a Forgeworld.
• As the situation deteriorates and transport and logistical lines are disrupted or wholly lost due to the Rift and its aftermath, ever increasing pressure is placed on many worlds. Local Administratum officials in at least some systems in Imperium Nihilus are ramping up tithes to unsustainable levels to try and make up the shortfall (though this seems to be a pattern across the Imperium more broadly).
• It may be possible to meet these new quotas in the very short-term by increasing shift lengths, introducing more automation, or using and requistioning more materials - such as prisoners to be used for servitors. And these short-term gains may be celebrated and lauded (by the Administratum, at least...)
• But this cannot last, and accidents, deaths and mental breakdowns among the workforce all increase, while morale and productivity then decrease, as is to be expected. In fact, productivity levels here drop below what they were beforehand.
• Despite this, Adminstratum officials can and likely often do decline to reduce the tithe, and the Administratum and Ad Mech decline to provide more resources and replacement workers.
• We also see the use of more prisoners to be used to make the servitors. Why not simply use more vatgrown bodies? Well presumably, because they take resources to make, and resources are in short supply. Prisoners, meanwhile, are readily available. At least for a time, until they start to run out too... Hence why we see on the Agriworld of Ostia, more non-prinsoners being turned into Servitors as well.
• Desperate times lead to desparate decisions by those running worlds and manufactora as they struggle to meet the impossible tithes, knowing they will be harshly penalised for doing so... including, in this case, the use of some tech heresy...
• This then of course leads to a crisis which shuts down the whole manufactora, as the Heretek code takes produces an Abominable Intelligence which starts turning everybody into Servitors. Worse, this spills beyond the factorum itself, as Servitors start raiding a city to scoop up more unfortunates to be taken back and Servitorized. And now the issue at the manufactorum requires more resources to be spent to stop the rogue AI and its growing army of Servitors.
• This is one particularly interesting example, but the increased instability on many worlds post-Rift likely increases the possibility that all manner of disasters will unfold - whether due to lack of resources, increasingly harsh work regimes, rising tensions, or people taking dangerous decisions to try and save their own skin. Especially when nefarious actors may be on the loose and offering miracles...

These kinds of issues are exactly what you would expect to see in the aftermath of the Great Rift. And, indeed, they are putting strain on the whole Gilead system. 

For example, I covered how a community on the Agriworld of Ostia has been affected here: https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2025/06/an-agri-world-community-serves-as-neat.html

This post itself first appeared on Reddit, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ijw0dx/extract_a_servitor_manufactorum_struggles_to_meet/