+ Crewing a Titan +
+ A Titan is crewed by its Princeps and Moderati – but who else is involved; and what do they actually do? Today's inload investigates what's actually going on inside a Reaver Titan, and how you can use the info to help create fun narratives for your games or force background. +
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Scry-chronicle pre-mission datasquirt: {authval: Sensorius-principal Ossteon}
Validity: {principal >14% accur.}
+ Thought for the day: Knowledge is power, guard it well. +
Mission parameters:_________________________
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+ Nuts and bolts of Titan crew +
Prior to the 2018 release of Adeptus Titanicus (AT18), the background about Titan crews was fairly thin. Jervis Johnson's original 1987 release (AT87) had this to say:
The core concepts of Princeps as the commander and Moderati as support have held true ever since, even if the atmosphere as a whole has become more bound up in mysticism, doctrine and so forth.
The new rulebook expands considerably on this, with these rather lovely blueprint-style plates that inject some nice pseudo-realism into the game.
These are riddled with fun stats like the Titan's resting height (25.21m for the Mk XXIII Koron-Valerius configuration Mars-pattern Reaver Battle Titan) as well as naval-style berthing gauge, and more sci-fi stuff like reactor output and anima integrity; all intended to give us a sense of the universe as well as a bit of concrete info.
I'm pleased that the stats are tied to this very specific type of Titan, so there's still wiggle room for making your own stuff – to justify, for example, why your Forge World's particular pattern of Titan is slightly taller or shorter.
For the sake of the inload, the bit we're interested in is the Conventus complement or crew. For this Reaver, we're told it's as follows:
While an update to the original background, it's nice to see that the old material is still valid – the Specialist Games studio (and GW in general) is pretty good at sensitively updating material like this to expand upon, rather than overwrite, older background.
As we'll see, there's lots of info to get our teeth into, but there's also a lot of freedom in interpretation, so however you like your Titans – as walking battleships with a central voice of command, or as enormous robo-jockey battlesuits – there's a way to bring your vision to the table.
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+ Crew of the Reaver +
Delving deeper into the image, it reveals where this crew are placed in the Titan, and gives us their names.
- Armoured Head – Princeps and two to five Moderati; presumably the variance depends on the pattern and specific Titan.
- Limb weapon mounting point(s) – Weapons moderati
- Plasma Reactor – Tech-priest
The Clade is also explained by the Plasma Reactor – these are the sort-of human Servitors that enact the crew's will. 6–14 are noted as being housed in the Plasma Reactor, and this is the evidence for suggesting that the Tech-priest is formalised as part of the crew, rather than the
Incapable of independent thought, servitors simply follow the orders of the crew, and presumably help to ensure general systems like the shield projectors or stabilisers are operating smoothly, so the Tech-priest and Moderati can concentrate on the important stuff which requires independent thought.
The numbers in the image above need a little detective work to make sense. With a Clade of 9–17, but only 6–14 in the plasma reactor with the Tech-priest, we're short by three. With three primary weapons – one on each arm, and a third on the carapace – I think it makes most sense for the missing servitors to be assigned to primary weapons, and stowed in either alongside the Moderatus in individual gunnery command chambers, or (depending on the specific type of Reaver) perhaps in the weapons or mounted within the walls. I imagine some Forgeworlds are more or less concerned with the servitors' dignity!
An alternative – and remember, this is all informed guesswork – is that the missing three servitors could be accounted for as gunners for the automated defence weapons, be patrolling the deck as combat servitors, or pretty much any other task you'd like them for in your Titan.
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+ What do the crew do? +
The names of the crew are a mix of High Gothic cod-Latin and naval/military terms, which means that we can make some educated guesses as to their roles and duties.
- Princeps
- Perhaps the easiest to define, and certainly the most explored in the background, is the Princeps. This crew member takes the role of the ship's captain, and is also the one who has the most direct and deep connection to the Titan; feeling its body as his or her own.
- Primus
- This rank is in Betrayer, the Primus is seemingly reponsible for actioning the Princeps' orders; covering movement and aiming and firing the weapons.
- Steersman
- From implication, the Steersman is in charge of directing the Titan's movements; maintaining a course and speed.
- Navigator
- ... and the flip side of the Steersman taking you somewhere is the Navigator showing the Princeps where they need to go. In the context of 40k, Navigators are usually a special abhuman, but here I think it's most likely a more mundane map-reader and person in charge of analysis.
- Sensorious
- We can interpret this as someone in charge of the Titan's sensor array – something akin to a real-world officer in a naval operations room, in charge of identifying threats and hazards through 'spoor', the 40k equivalent of radar, sonar etc.
- Pleasingly, the sensorium is also a biological concept; it's the part of the brain that receives and interprets experiences – which is very on-brand for a 40k Titan.
- Oratorius
- With heavy Classical/religious trappings drawn from orare ('to pray'), the Oratorius can be interpreted as being in charge of that very 40k-coded mix of militarism and mysticism; so having some role to do with channeling and placating the Machine Spirit of the Titan and guarding the spirits of the crew.
- Alternatively, we can draw the origin of the rank from Oratorio, which is a musical term, suggesting this Moderatus orchestrates everything; making sure all the crew and systems are working together.
- Weapons Moderati
- Fairly clear here, I think. A Weapons Moderatus is in charge of a particular primary weapon.
- Tech-priest
- The other easy one – or at least a more well-documented 40k role – the Tech-priest in a Titan is in charge of the Servitor clade, monitoring and overseeing the plasma reactor, and directs repairs. He's the chief engineer, but with a heavy coat of religious paint.
In some background it's suggested that the Princeps controls everything that the Titan needs to do actively – movement, weapons and so forth. This relegates the rest of the crew to support roles. In other bits of background, we have the Princeps operating more as a directing force; so they order the Moderati to fire the weapons or increase the Titan's speed, for example – but it's the Moderati themselves that action things.
If you prefer the former, this makes having a crew on the smaller end much more sensible: one Princeps supported to two Moderati. If you prefer the latter, it makes more sense to have specialist Moderati directly involved in aiming and firing the guns, or moving the Titan's legs. And of course, you can happily blur the roles a bit: the Princeps deciding all the Titan's movement, for example, but the Moderati actually enacting things.
By terminology (and the appearance of the 'Secundus' rank in Betrayer), we can take the Primus to be the second-in-command – a 'Number 1' that's a senior Moderatus. We're told that Moderati are effectively Princeps in training, some (but not all) of whom will one day ascend to command a Titan of their own. You can decide how formal you want your Legio to be; and having titles like Primus are one way of showing it.
As a third option, it's notable that the 'gunnery command chamber' listed is singular, so all the weapons Moderati and our missing servitors could be grouped together rather than in individual little 'bubbles' for each main gun. But that begs a questions – where is this gunnery command chamber, and what form does it take?
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+ Where do the crew go? +
Besides the background in the book, we've also got the models to help guide us. The Forge World Reaver Titan is the Mars-Pattern, and that has the Princeps and two Moderati in the head...
...while under the carapace you'll find a Tech-priest and three servitors embedded in the walls and ceiling. Bafflingly, GW have precisely zero pictures of the Reaver interior on their website, but you can can see some great shots of the interior built and painted by
Goddenzilla at their blog
Kaiju Country [
+noosphericexloadlink embedded+].
What can we take from this? At face value, that the Mars-pattern Reaver sits toward the lower end of the crew complement outlined in the rulebook background. Given that the Clade is represented by just three visible servitors, however, rather than the minimum of six, we should probably assume that the model doesn't quite reflect the in-universe reality – so it's entirely possible that there are more Servitors and possibly Moderati in other parts of the Titan that simply aren't shown/modelled.
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+ Rivet-counting +
For explorations of the 'fuzzy edges' of 40k like this, I've always leaned towards the 'yes, and' principle. By that I mean that while there's often an answer within the 'official' background, there's lots of room for interpretation and variety. 'Yes, Mark II power armour has a fixed helm – and there are some variants that have a mobile helm'. It allows people to point to particular details and stick closely to 'the canon lore', but also allows for updates, retcons and good old fashioned exploring and creativity.
Do Reaver Titans have the Princeps and two Moderati in the head?
Yes, and some also have more Moderati elsewhere as well/this Legio has all the crew in the gunnery deck/this pattern only has the Steersman there/this particular Titan crams seven crew into the head.
You have a lot of freedom. While Titans can be identified as different types, they are ritualised and individual creations – so their creation has as much in common with a church or temple as with, say, a tank or car.
Churches of a particular era can be identified by being built in a cross shape, and will have an atrium, an apse, an altar etc. – these are the things that make them a church building rather than, say, a town hall – but there will also be a lot of variety in the specifics. The point is that they're individual buildings, and not mass-manufactured.
Likewise a Reaver can be identified by certain elements: being broadly human-shaped, having mounting points for three primary weapons, broad scale (covered by the in-universe term Immensus), and having a machine spirit that can be interacted with by the Princeps. The finer details – berthing gauge, resting height, reactor output etc. – will vary depending upon the particular Forgeworld, time and circumstances of its creation. This extends to the crew compartment, and thus the crew.
On top of that, besides the design of the individual Titan, the Forge World's, Legio's and crew's cultural and societal idiosyncracies, beliefs and ranking systems will also differ, which means that there's absolutely no reason why different Titans of the same type might not have different crews for various reasons.
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Back to the crew. What does this variety mean for our hypothetical Reaver crew? Well, all Reavers must have a Princeps, and must have a Tech-priest, and must have at least two Moderati. Beyond that, you've got a lot of flex.
Even within a Titan Legion, different Titan patterns and variants exist. Mars- and Lucius-pattern Titans might serve together as the result of ten thousand years of war, alliance and trade, and there are presumably lots more patterns of Titan, some of which might cram all the crew into the head; others of which split them between the head and a gunnery deck; and still others might have the crew elsewhere.
AT87 made this explicit, with the 'Deathstrike head' variant. This replaced the head entirely with a giant gun (Jes Goodwin clearly channeling his inner Mekaniak with this design!), and moved the crew to a fire control platform or tower:
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| Incidentally, it's my guess that this concept of a giant centreline gun with a viewing platform served as part of the inspiration for the new Warbringer-Nemesis Titan. |
The variety of heads Jes designed suggests that the GW design team left lots of design space open on what exactly was going on in a Titan's head. The Command and Custodian Heads (top left of the picture) suggest a mobile command and control centre, perhaps with more space for Moderati – these would be a great head to use as inspiration if you want lots of Moderati there. I can picture a two-tiered bridge-style interior, with the Sensorius, Oratorius and Princeps on one level, and a Steersman and two weapon Moderati on the next level down.
The weapons heads – particularly the close combat and Corvus assault head – would suggest that the Princeps and Moderati were tucked away elsewhere in the Titan, on a separate command and control deck, so this concept might be your choice if you prefer a naval-style 'ops room' to the more common pilot-style approach.
(The design, of course, suggests that – but doesn't insist upon it. You're quite welcome to have your Princeps and Moderati perched above a chainblade if you wish! That mix of reverence and danger is very fitting for the insanity of the 41st millennium).
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+ Conclusion +
Much of this is my speculation, and its purpose is to spark some ideas for you to help design and explore the crew of your Titan.
The point that I'm dancing around is that you can have a very rigid and structured system for your Reaver (and other Titans), or a very freeform one. Like much of 40k, you've got the whole gamut of sleek Star Trek-style sci-fi right down to techno-barbarian thugs following through with blood ritual, taking in hooded monks guiding their titan through organ-style keyboards, amputees in fluid-filled tanks, fighter-pilot style charmers and much, much more.
Keep your inload-port cycled open, as I'm planning to use the info and ideas above as a way to explore a Reaver crew of my own devising – to show how this all works in practise, and how we can apply it to making fun models with a bit of story behind them.
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| + Cue 80s montage music + |
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