“A limited data-engine and geometric display that has proven useful to those faced with challenging problems of logic or fragmentary information. It gives a +20 bonus to Logic skill Tests, and at the GM’s discretion may reduce the time taken for research or investigations, provided that the investigator has the Tech-Use skill.
Imperial Dataloom
Tucked within a secure deck amid vox-tower arrays and shielded from warp bleed by layers of plasteel and sanctified lead, the Imperial Dataloom is the ship’s primary renumeration engine—a chamber of thought and memory where cogitators spin, data-cubes hum, and knowledge is desiphered, stored, and forgotten.
This is not some sleek machine-spirit archive of the Mechanicus’ ancient design. No, the Dataloom is typical machine of the Imperium, a room-sized processor cathedral—manual, mechanical, sacredly inefficient—and all the more durable for it.
Structure & Layout
The Dataloom spans several vault-sized compartments, with tiered walkways and high-vaulted aisles reminiscent of a scriptorum chapel:
- Racks of cogitators, each the size of a sarcophagus, line the walls—their data-keys flickering with green-amber light. They spin and chatter as servo-tines scratch wax-cylinder backup traces in real-time.
- Pillar-mounted data-cube towers loom like reliquaries, each slot filled with memory bricks etched with machine-code and signed with purity seals.
- Walls are inset with manual switchboards and configurator panels—each connection made by hand, using color-coded fiber-jacks and brass rotary plates, often requiring two adepts to coordinate for large query routines.
- The air is dense with ozone, machine-oil, and parchment dust.
Cooling System: Sacred Waters, Righteous Steam
Given its massive processing load with overclocked cogitators, the Dataloom employs a water-to-steam cooling system, maintained by a rubber-robed technomat, a Steam-Warden:
- Thick iron pipes wind like arteries through the ceiling and floor, gurgling with consecrated water drawn from recycled sources.
- Heat from the cogitators is vented through ceremonial copper flues, billowing thin plumes of white steam into filtration ducts lined with incense filters.
- Every third day, steam pressure is released through hymnal vent-grilles that sound like a distant, reverent chant—earning the process the nickname “The Machine-Spirit’s Breath.”
Cabling and Connection
The floor is nearly invisible beneath tangles of sanctified cable, each one bound with wax-sealed tags denoting data class, security tier, and origin node:
- Cables hang from rafters, bundle through floor grates, and weave into cogitator racks like creeping ivy.
- Occasional sparks and static arcs between improperly shielded junctions are a known hazard—junior adepts often bear ritual scars from mispatching memory feeds.
- Some cable clusters are so dense and ancient that no one knows what they connect to—they are simply maintained, oiled, and occasionally prayed over.
Function and Reverence
The Imperial Dataloom is a hybrid shrine of data and devotion, used to:
- Cross-reference and verify Imperial records, battle telemetry, astropathic message logs, and doctrinal texts.
- Encode information into archived data-cubes, filtered through liturgical compliance protocols.
- Perform lexmechanical queries that take hours or days to compute—but once resolved, are considered near-infallible.
Only trained Lexmechanics and sanctioned Savants may operate the system. Unauthorized access is punishable by memory purge or servitorhood.
Ignis Aeternus WH 40K campaign notes 