Signatures4

Aura of the Omnissiah: The Machine God tends its own. While a Tech-Priest stands on the battlefield, every friendly Construct within 6" of that priest is wrapped in the machine-spirit's blessing. Whenever such a Construct suffers a Wound, it may make a 6+ shrug — a single save against that Wound, taken regardless of the attacker's Armour Penetration, though weapons that already deny this save still deny it.

This is not resurrection but maintenance made passive: the well-tended engine that keeps grinding simply because a priest is near. The aura asks nothing of the priest's activation — it radiates for as long as the priest lives. Cut the priests down and the blessing lifts, and the machines fight on with only their own hulls to protect them.

Canticles of the Omnissiah: A maniple of the Machine God does not fight as a mob of individuals but under a liturgy chanted across the whole force. At the start of each round, the senior Tech-Priest — the Dominus, or any fighter with Canticle Adept should the Dominus have fallen — declares one Canticle. Its blessing grants a gang-wide aura to every friendly fighter until the end of that round, when it lapses; a different Canticle may be sung the next round. It is a rotating stance, never a hoarded pool.

The senior priest chooses one of the following each round:

• Shroudpsalm — every friendly fighter counts as being in partial cover, even in the open.
• Incantation of the Iron Soul — friendly fighters auto-pass Nerve tests and the gang takes no Bottle tests.
• Chant of the Remorseless Fist — friendly fighters gain +1" Move and may charge after a standard Move.
• Litany of the Electromancer — a friendly fighter's first melee or arc Hit each round inflicts one extra automatic Hit.
• Invocation of Machine Might — friendly fighters' melee attacks gain +1 Strength.
• Benediction of the Omnissiah — friendly fighters re-roll ranged Hit rolls of 1.

Only one Canticle is ever active, and only while a priest with the Voice still lives. With no priest to lead the liturgy, the maniple fights as a silent, doctrine-less rabble.

Rites of Repair: Where other soldiers press an attack, a Tech-Priest may instead kneel and work. In place of its own shooting or melee action — it may still move — a Tech-Priest performs a Rite of Repair on an adjacent friendly Construct within 1": a Servitor, Kataphron, Kastelan Robot, or Ironstrider or Sydonian walker. It may never mend itself, and never a flesh-and-augmetic Skitarii or Electro-Priest.

A single Rite does one of the following: restore one lost Wound to the Construct; remove one Flesh Wound as the damaged servo is re-welded; or, if the Construct is Seriously Injured or Down, haul it back online, standing it up with one Wound. A Tech-Priest may perform one Rite per round. This is maintenance, not miracle — the machine rises only because a living hand reached it and worked. When the priests fall, the constructs they tended stay where they dropped.

The Doctrina Imperatives are the maniple's defining twist: a per-fighter combat-doctrine uploaded into the line and stacked on top of the gang's Canticle, so that a Skitarii fights under two doctrines at once. At the start of each round, every Skitarii fighter adopts one Doctrina for that round. Under Bulwark, the fighter gains +1 to its ranged Hit rolls but suffers −1 to its melee Hit rolls — the ranged-precise stance. Under Conqueror, it gains +1" to its Move and +1 Attack in the melee but suffers −1 to its ranged Hit rolls — the aggressive stance.

The toggle stacks freely with whatever Canticle the senior Tech-Priest has declared, layering a personal doctrine over the gang-wide one. The Skitarii Marshal projects its own chosen Doctrina as a 6" aura, so nearby friendly Skitarii adopt the Marshal's doctrine in place of choosing their own. Each stance is a single fixed trade — a bonus in one phase and a penalty in the other — and it grants nothing that can be banked or carried between rounds. The counter is the same as the maniple's: a fighter locked into Bulwark for the firefight strikes poorly if it is reached, and one set to Conqueror shoots poorly on the approach.