Quote Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx View Post
RE: Covert Operations can only go so far:

I think you underestimate both the possibilities of people in The Inquisition to be factionalized, and the capability of one faction to become the dominant and ascendant faction in the Inquisition... *and* I think you misunderstand the ability of a Mind to do a Xanatos Gambit -- especially if a very competent Inquisitor is helping! Seriously, with a Radical / Recongregator / Xenos Hybris (or Equiv.) Inquisitor with Culture's aid, one of the FIRST things he will want to do is figure out ways to discredit other factions in the Inquisition / blackmail them / encourage the schemes of all allied and similar-thinking factions and conspiracies to gain a firm dominance within the Inquisition itself. And only THEN would they start to get help doing their actual plans to change the Imperium, and only THEN would they start seeking The Culture's help in locating other possible locations for institutional reform and change.

RE: Dark Mechanicum and Reverse Engineering:

Here's the thing you are forgetting. Even though the people in the Dark Mechanicum were probably once able and quite interested in reverse-engineering Xenotech... these people have been profoundly corrupted by the forces of Chaos. They are no longer interested in reverse engineering things or improving the base technological level or anything rational like that. They are interested in doing things like figuring out how best to fuse daemonic, metal, and mortal flesh, as well as things like binding a Daemon into a machine. This sort of thing does not generally produce *better* stuff than the Imperium, in general. These people don't really reverse engineer anything, or otherwise they would (for example) have more and better Titans. Which they DON'T! Even though they don't have restrictions on attempts to reverse engineer... their minds are corrupted to the point where it would never occur to them to do so on any scale; they merely seek to corrupt and use. Rather than looking to see what is SAID about Chaos and innovation, look at what they actually DO. Remember, there are canonically chaos-corrupted full AI's (self improving and all) in the Imperium. Why don't you see those being used by the Dark Mechanicum? Because those are just another faction of Chaos, and a threat to THEIR dominion.
Actually, they corrupted a Titan Production STC in Dark Mechanicum, and were using it to mass produce Titans by the millions, and were only stopped by the Father STC turning on the produced units thanks to a Grey Knight manifesting and using it as the Princep inside, being the STC Titan it was delerious biznasty.

They do, in fact, try to do these things. It's just they get stopped, a lot.