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| - Such skills conspire to make the Master of the Forge something of an outcast in most Space Marine Chapters. Though he is always part of the Chapter Council, the Master of the Forge is an outsider to all save his subordinate Techmarines, whose company is shunned in all matters save those that pertain to his beloved mechanicals. In addition, to his Mechanicus "brethren", a Master of the Forge is often seen as the worst kind of Heretek, loyal to the Quest for Knowledge in name only, a warrior who does not hesitate to bend and adapt a Machine Spirit to his needs instead of carefully entreating and revering it as the Cult Mechanicus prescribes. While often excessive, there is a core of truth in the Mechanicus' accusations, for a Master of the Forge is first and formost a Space Marine, a warrior
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| abstract
| - Such skills conspire to make the Master of the Forge something of an outcast in most Space Marine Chapters. Though he is always part of the Chapter Council, the Master of the Forge is an outsider to all save his subordinate Techmarines, whose company is shunned in all matters save those that pertain to his beloved mechanicals. In addition, to his Mechanicus "brethren", a Master of the Forge is often seen as the worst kind of Heretek, loyal to the Quest for Knowledge in name only, a warrior who does not hesitate to bend and adapt a Machine Spirit to his needs instead of carefully entreating and revering it as the Cult Mechanicus prescribes. While often excessive, there is a core of truth in the Mechanicus' accusations, for a Master of the Forge is first and formost a Space Marine, a warrior of the Emperor tasked with ensuring that the Astartes in his care always have the means to wage war at their disposal. Few Masters of the Forge hesitate to modify or even completely overhaul a weapon or vehicle to better fit their Chapter's need, to the dismay and outrage of the more conservative Tech-priests. New patterns of existing vehicles developed by a Master of the Forge are often grudgingly accepted and blessed by the Mechanicus only after painstakingly slow and lengthy examinations, when they are accepted at all. Some Masters of the Forge, tired of waiting for an unrequired approval from dogmatic non-combatants, have simply spread the specifications of their craft to their fellows of other Chapters, bypassing the Mechanicus entirely, which has only served to stress and antagonize the relationship between Astartes and Mechanicus further. Not all Space Marine Chapters treat their Master of the Forge in this way. Some, such as the Mentors, the Praetors of Orpheus and the Astral Knights, embrace the dwindling advanced technologies of Mankind without the usual superstition and, in the case of the Iron Hands, with an enthusiasm nearly matching the Mechanicus. In these Chapters, the Master of the Forge is a personage honoured no less than the Chapter Master himself. Such cases are not common among Astartes. Indeed, for one Chapter to embrace the vision and purpose of a Master of the Forge is to invite suspicion from many of its more conventional brothers. In addition to his responsibilities to maintain the Chapter Armoury, a Master of the Forge is also tasked with the conservation of any arcane technological artefacts to which his Chapter is heir. The oldest and most famous Astartes Chapters have many such technological wonders from the time before the Horus Heresy locked within their Armoury's vaults. Like the other Techmarines who serve under him, the Master of the Forge is equipped with powerful bionic servo-arms called Mechadendrites that can be used for battlefield repairs or even put to use as another weapon. Masters of the Forge also sometimes wield an ancient pre-Heresy weapon called a Conversion Beamer, whose projectors fire a beam of anti-matter that induces a controlled subatomic reaction in the target, converting its mass into energy. The further away the target, the more deadly the blast, as the beam has time to grow in power.
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