Tech-thralls were specialised troops of the Legio Cybernetica created by the Mechanicum through basic augmetics and cranial surgery as the need for them arose, especially during the massive Imperial expansion during the Great Crusade and later the interstellar civil war known as the Horus Heresy. They were not Servitors, which used often formerly human biological matter as a component system, but rather could be considered cyborgs as consciousness and memory was not extinguished before they were reprocessed into their new forms, merely mutilated and overridden. The conversion process commonly awaited the laity of a Forge World's population should it prove sub-standard or commit some transgression against its masters, for few other criminal punishments existed in the Omnissiah's domains. Te