# The dark age of technology.



## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

So according to sources the dark age of technology was from M15 to roughly M25, give or take a few years.

What is used in 40K for tech is scraps and shadows compared to what they once had.
Their tech level was high enough that nearly 20K years later scraps are still useful enough to slow the imperiums death.
According to sources they lost allot due to an AI revolt infecting the men of iron, no information is given as to why it happened, you'd think humans during that time would be genre savvy enough to realize that it was a possibility.

Since GW probably is never going to advance the plot why not rewind it, have a warhammer 20K where we get to read stories about humanity at the pinnacle of their technological power.

These few scraps of information got me curious about what it was like and honestly I have an awesome idea for a men of iron story.


----------



## zerachiel76 (Feb 12, 2010)

Sounds like a cool idea to me, especially if they could link in what the Emperor was doing during this time. For all we know the Emperor actually led Mankind during this time since it makes sense he would lead them at the height of their powers. 

The story could be written he retreated back into the shadows after this first Empire collapsed due to the Iron Men. After all it's been written (in Mechanicum I think) that the Emperor fought various mechanical enemies at times, imprisoning the Void Dragon on Mars to preserve the knowledge in order to set up the Adeptus Mechanicus.


----------



## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

The Dragon was imprisoned long before mankind had any technology to speak of, during the middle ages in fact, giving rise to the legend of St George (or so it is hinted).

It's even possible that the Dragon had more to do with Mankind's Fall after the Age of Technology than the current lore says. The Men of Iron sound similar to something approaching necrons, and it is possible that the technology to build them came from the dreams of the c'tan shard as it remembered its much older servants. 

Whether or not it directly or perhaps indirectly sparked their rebellion is a matter of speculation. It is known that they became self aware at some point, Rise of the Machines style and drove Mankind into a regressive state and imbuing them with a fear of technology. The only individuals who would have knowledge of those times are the Emperor, the Dragon itself and it is hinted certain high ranking members of the Adeptus Mechanicus.


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

> The Dragon was imprisoned long before mankind had any technology to speak of, during the middle ages in fact, giving rise to the legend of St George (or so it is hinted).
> 
> It's even possible that the Dragon had more to do with Mankind's Fall after the Age of Technology than the current lore says. The Men of Iron sound similar to something approaching necrons, and it is possible that the technology to build them came from the dreams of the c'tan shard as it remembered its much older servants.


It wasn't so much as hinted as thrown in your face. I thought it was also stated by the void dragons keeper that it was the presence of the void dragon on mars that kept the Sol system from losing ALL it's technology. This is going by a 4/5 year memory though.


The end of the dark age was between 23-25M do to several reasons. The Iron Men rebelling, I know some people are going to hate me for this, but they were like the matrix world, they came to rely on the AI infused robots for everything from manual labor to basic defense. So eventually the Iron men started to think they were better than humans and grew tired of being treated poorly so one day one rebelled and then a chain reaction. The sudden appearance of human psykers which cut of many trade routs TO Terra and resulted in mass starvation and the resulting things that come with it. The slow divergence of abhumans and then the sudden massive warp storms were the death knell of the Dark Age. Big Book ed6


----------



## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

Serpion5 said:


> The Dragon was imprisoned long before mankind had any technology to speak of, during the middle ages in fact, giving rise to the legend of St George (or so it is hinted).
> 
> It's even possible that the Dragon had more to do with Mankind's Fall after the Age of Technology than the current lore says. The Men of Iron sound similar to something approaching necrons, and it is possible that the technology to build them came from the dreams of the c'tan shard as it remembered its much older servants.
> 
> Whether or not it directly or perhaps indirectly sparked their rebellion is a matter of speculation. It is known that they became self aware at some point, Rise of the Machines style and drove Mankind into a regressive state and imbuing them with a fear of technology. The only individuals who would have knowledge of those times are the Emperor, the Dragon itself and it is hinted certain high ranking members of the Adeptus Mechanicus.


Personally I was thinking that the AI that controlled the men of iron discovered the threat of chaos and acted in an attempt to stop what was about to happen.

After all an AI would in theory have the ability to root out psykers and deal with them before they're a threat.


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Reaper45 said:


> Personally I was thinking that the AI that controlled the men of iron discovered the threat of chaos and acted in an attempt to stop what was about to happen.
> 
> After all an AI would in theory have the ability to root out psykers and deal with them before they're a threat.


How would it be able to tell nonpsykers from latent. Also psykers didn't arise till either after or around the same time, as the rise of psykers coincided to the build up to the fall of the eldar.


----------



## The Warpsmith (Jun 4, 2014)

my assumptions about the Men of Iron is that they were the "androids" from Space Crusade which were the eventual creation of GW coming up with the Necrons...i always thought it was strange that there isnt a more apparent AI angle (other then the Machine Spirit) so having more stories about this kind of stuff would be awesome


----------



## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

locustgate said:


> How would it be able to tell nonpsykers from latent. Also psykers didn't arise till either after or around the same time, as the rise of psykers coincided to the build up to the fall of the eldar.


Perhaps there was some sort of sign that it was going to happen? Perhaps a friendly eldar farseer saw the future and warned a human about it, they them ordered the AI to try and do something about it.

It's fairly vague as to what happened, which makes for awesome stories.


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Well even the AI's are not proof against chaos. Theres been many stories with corrupted AIs. The Castigator, the Kaban Machine. The men of iron STC assembler Gaunt and company found. 

And there was a comic with a squad of Arbites trying to prevent a mechanicus team from opening a machine tomb that had been sealed for 20.000 years. Which turned out to be contain a highly malevolent AI, that in its own words said that its creators had imprisoned it, because they were afraid of what they had wrough..


----------



## 40kBookReviews (Aug 24, 2014)

While it could be interesting for those of us that are super deep into the 40k lore, I would imagine that the 20k universe is just a little too far removed from the things that really characterize the 40k (and 30k) universe.

No Space Marines, no Imperium, no or little meaningful Chaos presence, no diverse selection of Xenos races trying to wipe out humanity. Honestly, the Dark Age of technology sounds incredibly similar to me to the "Butlerian Jihad" Dune novels (which are very good, btw) and not like something that would easily integrate into the current Black Library portfolio.


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Reaper45 said:


> Perhaps there was some sort of sign that it was going to happen? Perhaps a friendly eldar farseer saw the future and warned a human about it, they them ordered the AI to try and do something about it.
> 
> It's fairly vague as to what happened, which makes for awesome stories.


The farseers didn't appear till shortly before the fall of the eldar which didn't occur till 30M, theres a 5M discrepancy, remember the original farseers were doomsayers.


----------



## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

40kBookReviews said:


> While it could be interesting for those of us that are super deep into the 40k lore, I would imagine that the 20k universe is just a little too far removed from the things that really characterize the 40k (and 30k) universe.
> 
> No Space Marines, no Imperium, no or little meaningful Chaos presence, no diverse selection of Xenos races trying to wipe out humanity. Honestly, the Dark Age of technology sounds incredibly similar to me to the "Butlerian Jihad" Dune novels (which are very good, btw) and not like something that would easily integrate into the current Black Library portfolio.


There's tons of things to do.

Gaunts ghosts, ciaphas cain, Ravenor, Eisenhorn are all stores that don't directly feature astartes. Yet they are good reads. 

Why couldn't we have stories about elite spec op teams performing missions? After all the eldar at their almost worse and orks who had centuries to grow would be around.

Hell the squats could make appearances, or any made up alien species, the idea would be to show how the galaxy got to the point it is in 30K.



locustgate said:


> The farseers didn't appear till shortly before the fall of the eldar which didn't occur till 30M, theres a 5M discrepancy, remember the original farseers were doomsayers.


Forgot about that, replace farseer with someone who saw visions of the future.


----------



## 40kBookReviews (Aug 24, 2014)

Reaper45 said:


> There's tons of things to do.
> 
> Gaunts ghosts, ciaphas cain, Ravenor, Eisenhorn are all stores that don't directly feature astartes. Yet they are good reads.
> 
> ...


But all of the books you mentioned still have the distinct grimdark feel of the 40k universe, which is one that is full of despair, superstition, fanaticism and a complete disregard for human life enforced by an ancient an unwieldy bureaucratic monolithic government.

All these elements have their roots in the Emperor's founding of the Imperium.

I'm sure you could still do books in 20k, but humanity was in a very different place at that time and I don't think it would have very many themes in common with the 30k and 40k novels.


----------



## Angel of Lies (Oct 10, 2011)

Reaper45 said:


> Personally I was thinking that the AI that controlled the men of iron discovered the threat of chaos and acted in an attempt to stop what was about to happen.
> 
> After all an AI would in theory have the ability to root out psykers and deal with them before they're a threat.


I like this idea. It would have more meaning, to those of who know what happens, that the AIs that Humanity created coalesced and came to understand the Warp, eventually saw the future, and realized that the Emperor and Humanity must be destroyed before the horrors of the 41st Millennium.

Edit: And by traditional 40k irony (despite not being near 40k), their actions ultimately lead to everything that happened. Humanity's fear of technology, machine spirits (the monolithic AI being broken down into primitive subforms), ect, ect. Hilarious and all that jazz.


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Angel of Lies said:


> I like this idea. It would have more meaning, to those of who know what happens, that the AIs that Humanity created coalesced and came to understand the Warp, eventually saw the future, and realized that the Emperor and Humanity must be destroyed before the horrors of the 41st Millennium.


But even AIs are not impervious to chaos. Whos not to say that the original AIs truly was corrupted by chaos?

Which reminds me of the old Ravenloft DnD setting, the Demiplane of Dread. If you create a golem, or any other artificial being, it -will- be inhabited by a malicious entity eventually seeking to destroy its creator.


----------



## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

40kBookReviews said:


> But all of the books you mentioned still have the distinct grimdark feel of the 40k universe, which is one that is full of despair, superstition, fanaticism and a complete disregard for human life enforced by an ancient an unwieldy bureaucratic monolithic government.
> 
> All these elements have their roots in the Emperor's founding of the Imperium.
> 
> I'm sure you could still do books in 20k, but humanity was in a very different place at that time and I don't think it would have very many themes in common with the 30k and 40k novels.


You could set the books to have several different back stories for example one could be set to follow a random civilian as they reap the joys of all this technology and basically showing that life is pretty well.

Then you could have a story by a black ops operator showing the things that happens behind the scenes
to ensure that they have their life.

The joy of the horus heresy series is that life looks good and the heresy seems like a small thing on the galactic scale, we know just how bad it's going to get but there's nothing that can be done to change it.


----------



## Moriouce (Oct 20, 2009)

Why would we need to move 20k years to visit high tech humans? Didn't the legions during the great crusade encounter small human cultures and empires that had progressed far beyond that of DAoT humanity but destroyed them and any trace of their tech. Would be nice to have a novel that showed the battle against such an empire.


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Moriouce said:


> Why would we need to move 20k years to visit high tech humans? Didn't the legions during the great crusade encounter small human cultures and empires that had progressed far beyond that of DAoT humanity but destroyed them and any trace of their tech. Would be nice to have a novel that showed the battle against such an empire.


Auretian Technocrazy that Horus destroyed. Or the cyberphiles encountered by Russ and the Space wolves in Prospero Burns.


----------



## Moriouce (Oct 20, 2009)

Brother Lucian said:


> Auretian Technocrazy that Horus destroyed. Or the cyberphiles encountered by Russ and the Space wolves in Prospero Burns.


There you have it then!


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Brother Lucian said:


> Auretian Technocrazy that Horus destroyed. Or the cyberphiles encountered by Russ and the Space wolves in Prospero Burns.


Yeah, but those are still only using a fraction of 20k stuff, I don't think you should go back to the dark age of tech.


----------



## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

Moriouce said:


> Why would we need to move 20k years to visit high tech humans? Didn't the legions during the great crusade encounter small human cultures and empires that had progressed far beyond that of DAoT humanity but destroyed them and any trace of their tech. Would be nice to have a novel that showed the battle against such an empire.


Keep in mind that the Baneblade was considered a light tank by the DAOT standards. Why wouldn't you want stories about them.


----------



## Moriouce (Oct 20, 2009)

Reaper45 said:


> Keep in mind that the Baneblade was considered a light tank by the DAOT standards. Why wouldn't you want stories about them.



And if some lone planetary emperor has been able to survive the AoS and developed them to even bigger, more hightech tanks. Or even made them obsolete by building bigger, faster, deadlier hovet tanks. Or hightech stealth/jump tanks. Why Wouldn't you want stories about them??


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Reaper45 said:


> Keep in mind that the Baneblade was considered a light tank by the DAOT standards. Why wouldn't you want stories about them.


That's kind of understandable why they don't do DAOT......imagining a Baneblade being a LIGHT tank is kind of hard to relate to, you have Russes that are about the size of a modern take and a baneblade more like a moving building.... I can't really picture something bigger than a baneblade moving on treads, at useful speeds..


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

locustgate said:


> That's kind of understandable why they don't do DAOT......imagining a Baneblade being a LIGHT tank is kind of hard to relate to, you have Russes that are about the size of a modern take and a baneblade more like a moving building.... I can't really picture something bigger than a baneblade moving on treads, at useful speeds..


The Land Behemoths such as the rolling Fortress monasteries of the Iron Hands.


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Brother Lucian said:


> The Land Behemoths such as the rolling Fortress monasteries of the Iron Hands.


How fast do they move?


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

locustgate said:


> How fast do they move?


The Iron Hands novella does not explicitly say so, but on the last couple pages theres bits from the chaos invasion of Medusa. Where all of the land behemoths is linned up with the rest of the armor and rolling forward with earthshattering noise. But appearing to keep pace.


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Brother Lucian said:


> The Iron Hands novella does not explicitly say so, but on the last couple pages theres bits from the chaos invasion of Medusa. Where all of the land behemoths is linned up with the rest of the armor and rolling forward with earthshattering noise. But appearing to keep pace.


Size? Sorry asking cause I can't find anything on lex.


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

locustgate said:


> Size? Sorry asking cause I can't find anything on lex.


Described as vast, mobile ziggurat cities, each commanding firepower equal to Ordinatus Gehenna from the same book. Which had an Apocalypse Cannon that could sunder a mountain range.

But i should draw your attention to this thread about the very subject.
http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=163050


----------



## GabrialSagan (Sep 20, 2009)

Warhammer 20k would be a terrible idea for the same reason writing the Horus Heresy books was a terrible idea. Part of the original charm of the 40k verse was the mystery. Right now people have the liberty to imagine what life was like in the DAoT, what wonders mankind built and discoveries they made are limited only by people's imagination. The same way the truth of the Emperor's nature and intentions were up to people's imaginations. If GW made warhammer 20k then they would canonically define what did and did not happen during this mysterious lost age of wonders.


----------



## Moriouce (Oct 20, 2009)

GabrialSagan said:


> Warhammer 20k would be a terrible idea for the same reason writing the Horus Heresy books was a terrible idea. Part of the original charm of the 40k verse was the mystery. Right now people have the liberty to imagine what life was like in the DAoT, what wonders mankind built and discoveries they made are limited only by people's imagination. The same way the truth of the Emperor's nature and intentions were up to people's imaginations. If GW made warhammer 20k then they would canonically define what did and did not happen during this mysterious lost age of wonders.



Remember that few things that you read in the HH series are known to the inhabitants of the 40k era and and some only to a selected few. Which makes the HH series very optional to heed when you build and paint your 40k army.


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

GabrialSagan said:


> Warhammer 20k would be a terrible idea for the same reason writing the Horus Heresy books was a terrible idea. Part of the original charm of the 40k verse was the mystery. Right now people have the liberty to imagine what life was like in the DAoT, what wonders mankind built and discoveries they made are limited only by people's imagination. The same way the truth of the Emperor's nature and intentions were up to people's imaginations. If GW made warhammer 20k then they would canonically define what did and did not happen during this mysterious lost age of wonders.


Well they have canonly said what happened during the golden age. Warp Drives mastered, navigators arose, Iron men made (latter rebelled), humans became dependent on machines (iron men), humans expanded to stars on the edge of the galaxy, humans made pacts with xenos, baneblades made as a light class tank, psykers arose, humans worshiped science as god, etc.

Saying knowing atleast a sliver of what happened in 20k would affect 40k would be like saying if we knew about stone age civilizations would radically affect what we know about modern civilizations.


----------



## GabrialSagan (Sep 20, 2009)

locustgate said:


> Well they have canonly said what happened during the golden age. Warp Drives mastered, navigators arose, Iron men made (latter rebelled), humans became dependent on machines (iron men), humans expanded to stars on the edge of the galaxy, humans made pacts with xenos, baneblades made as a light class tank, psykers arose, humans worshiped science as god, etc.
> 
> Saying knowing atleast a sliver of what happened in 20k would affect 40k would be like saying if we knew about stone age civilizations would radically affect what we know about modern civilizations.


I agree that their is no harm knowing slivers of what happened in the bygone age because tiny slivers leave big gaps to fill in. But if an entire game with books was devoted to it those slivers would grow and squeeze out imagination.


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

GabrialSagan said:


> I agree that their is no harm knowing slivers of what happened in the bygone age because tiny slivers leave big gaps to fill in. But if an entire game with books was devoted to it those slivers would grow and squeeze out imagination.


40k has an entire game and books devoted to it and we still only know a small sliver of it. The galaxy is a big big place.


----------



## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

GabrialSagan said:


> Warhammer 20k would be a terrible idea for the same reason writing the Horus Heresy books was a terrible idea. Part of the original charm of the 40k verse was the mystery. Right now people have the liberty to imagine what life was like in the DAoT, what wonders mankind built and discoveries they made are limited only by people's imagination. The same way the truth of the Emperor's nature and intentions were up to people's imaginations. If GW made warhammer 20k then they would canonically define what did and did not happen during this mysterious lost age of wonders.


The horus heresy series gives life to the traitor primarchs.

Instead of the world eaters and angron being lobotomized berserkers who slaughtered what ever was in their way, they become a living legion who went to great lengths to establish a connection with their gene father. Angron himself has been given depth, instead of just being a dirty traitor you learn that he had a legit grievance with the emperor.

The fun of it is that we know the ending, we then get to learn how it happened.


----------



## GabrialSagan (Sep 20, 2009)

Reaper45 said:


> The horus heresy series gives life to the traitor primarchs.
> 
> Instead of the world eaters and angron being lobotomized berserkers who slaughtered what ever was in their way, they become a living legion who went to great lengths to establish a connection with their gene father. Angron himself has been given depth, instead of just being a dirty traitor you learn that he had a legit grievance with the emperor.
> 
> The fun of it is that we know the ending, we then get to learn how it happened.


I respectfully disagree.
Knowing the life and times of the Emperor and his primarchs removes all speculation. You didn't need GW to give Angron depth, you could have done it yourself. By saying the Emperor truly is some kind of ultimate super being with godlike powers you take away the possibility that he could be anything else. 

Back in the 90s I had it in my personal canon that the Emperor was a normal human scientist who was put in suspended animation during the age of tech and used his knowledge of science to create the astartes and unite the galaxy. In my head the Emperor was really dead, and had been dead for 10,000 years, the astronomicon was an automated system powered by psychic energy and the handful of people who knew the truth spent a good deal of time making sure the truth was hidden. 

In the 90s, no one could tell me I was wrong, my theory was as good as anyone's. Now, not so. The Emperor was born in 8000 BC in Turkey and through warp fuckery has been messing with humanity until he got bored of lurking in the shadows and decided to subjugate all of humanity. 

There is joy in mystery. This is something that seems lost on GW.


----------



## Moriouce (Oct 20, 2009)

GabrialSagan said:


> I respectfully disagree.
> 
> Knowing the life and times of the Emperor and his primarchs removes all speculation. You didn't need GW to give Angron depth, you could have done it yourself. By saying the Emperor truly is some kind of ultimate super being with godlike powers you take away the possibility that he could be anything else.
> 
> ...



Why don't you still believe all those things instead of swallowing all this imperial propaganda whole? Everyone has their opinions on stuff even if it has been stated in different ways throughout all the books durin the years. And for all the books they can put out there will always be gaps to fill with your imagination. As stated earlier, the galaxy is a big place.


----------



## Beaviz81 (Feb 24, 2012)

I guess you just have to roll with it. Luckily you can just sweep most of it under the POV-thingy, which makes some of the excesses in fluff tolerable. I actually am personally quite the fan of Empy being that almighty being he was back in the days and on the opposing side of GS in that respect, so you can imagine how well I like Empy being nerfed to a mere Pertubal by Abnett, yet I accept it though with some hesitation and such due to the fact that the Chaos gods had to turn Horus against him in order to kill him. As it seems really odd they being so powerful as i have seen people describe them and not just trouncing the upstart Empy like they have done before.


----------

