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-why is it happening?
-didn't the emperor want the imperium to regularly advance in technology?
-who started this technological decay?

New tech is heresy.

My personal thoughts are that its a way for GW to keep everything in their universe static without haveing either the Imperium table everyone, or make every other race in the galaxy over powered while maintaing the time scale of the game.

IIRC it began because of the Emperor's lack of pressence, with him no longer able to voice his ideals and personally guide the Imperium, the populace turned towards religion and treatment of the Emperor as a god, not just a benevolent leader. People were shown that there are things that go bump in the night, and when maps say 'here be monsters' people naturally fall back on superstition and religion to explain the unexplained, which is only reinforced by the jealousy with which the mechanicus guards its technological knowledge.

It began before the Emperor rose to power, the Dark age of Technology was in the distant past even at the time of the Great Crusade.

The Emperor is personally a technologist, but his contribution, that we know of, was the astartes geneseed. The Tau codex mentions there having been no true gains in Imperial science for 12,000 tau,cyr. This is refering to the creation of the space marines.

As to why it is like that. First it helps the grimdark background and imagery.
Second it makes sense, gaining in technology requires understanding the technological advances that preceed you. As knowledge is carefully guarded in the Imperium this isnt likely to happen however the STC assists in that the technology attained can be maintained even with a much reduced knowledge base.
The Imperium is not alone in this, it is the principle behind lostech in Battletech and could be said to have originated with Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. In fact GW's Imperium closely mimics Asimovs Galactic Empire in many ways and is equally doomed.

Please reember that only the Eldar have achieved a high technology and maintained it, the Necrons are thier technology and the Tau are way behind. Yes I did say behind, the Tau advantage is that their technology is emergent and vibrant, they are looking actively for new solutions buit are finding it hard to replicate capital technologies of the Imperium such as titans and warships.

Well, as I understand it, even during the Great Crusade when the Emprah walked amongst his subjects a lot of the technology in use was poorly understood. Thanks to the Age of Strife, a lot of technical knowledge from the Dark Age of Technology was lost, but thanks to the resiliance of the automated manufacturing equipment that the Dark Age of Technology created, a thorough understanding of advanced technology was no longer a prerequisite to its replication.

The decay of the Imperium's technology, then, is due to those manufacturing facilities being lost/destroyed/burned/eaten.

Orlanth wrote:
Please reember that only the Eldar have achieved a high technology and maintained it, the Necrons are thier technology and the Tau are way behind. Yes I did say behind, the Tau advantage is that their technology is emergent and vibrant, they are looking actively for new solutions buit are finding it hard to replicate capital technologies of the Imperium such as titans and warships.

Two things:
1. Tyranids have also managed to develop advanced tech, to the point where you can't even tell that it is tech.
2. The Tau don't create Titans and warships because they don't see the point. Their version of a titan is something like the Manta.

Titans are just big industrial robots. There's nothing magic about their technology.

Imperial ships have a different kind of star drive. It's not 100% a technological artifact, however, since it depends on psychic powers to operate it.

There are numerous kinds of star drives in use. The Tau, Kroot, Tyranids and Necrons all have star drives of different types.

The reason why Imperial technology is static or declining is because it is more Grimdark™ that way.

During the Dark Age of Technology the Standard Template Constructs were created.

The STC systems contained the entirety of mankind's knowledge at the height of our technological and scientific might. Hundreds of thousands of planets were colonised during this time and each colony was given an STC.

STCs made the colonies possible. If a colony needed a bulldozer, they pushed the 'bulldozer' button on the STC and one popped out (a few days or weeks later, but you get the idea). The STCs meant that every colony had access to the full breadth of technology.

Then came the iron men - full AIs. Like all AIs in fiction, they flipped out and rebelled - there was a war and the iron men were destroyed - this gave mankind a soul-deep fear of technology and invention, lest another race of iron men were created.

Then the Age of Strife began and warp storms cut off every colony from every other. Mankind feared to create new technology, so they reluied on the STCs. But over the millenia, the STCs broke down. Today there are none left.

All that remains of the STC system are those hard-copy printouts created and saved during the Age of Strife.

The Mechanicus holds billions of such STC printouts. These are instructions for how to make things, everything. Bulldozers, bolters, hinges, locks, clocks, you-name-it.

The Mechanicus has very very little idea how any of it works. They know that if you make all these parts and put them together in this way, you get a bolter, but they don't know why it works. They don't know the principles upon which their technology operate.

All they know is that it works now, and the last time someone tried to make it work better, mankind was nearly wiped out by the Iron Men.

Because of all of this, the sum-total of mankinds technology can only grow by discovering more STC printouts or (the holy grail) a functioning STC. Conversely, mankinds technology shriniks every time the 'nids eat a forgeword or the mechanicus miss-file the STC for shoelaces.

To complete the picture, if anyone gets any uppity ideas like smelting iron or something, to technology from scratch -- the Mechanicus and the Inquisition wipe out his planet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To complete the picture, if anyone gets any uppity ideas like smelting iron or something, to technology from scratch -- the Mechanicus and the Inquisition wipe out his planet.

Azezel wrote:During the Dark Age of Technology the Standard Template Constructs were created.

The STC systems contained the entirety of mankind's knowledge at the height of our technological and scientific might. Hundreds of thousands of planets were colonised during this time and each colony was given an STC.

STCs made the colonies possible. If a colony needed a bulldozer, they pushed the 'bulldozer' button on the STC and one popped out (a few days or weeks later, but you get the idea). The STCs meant that every colony had access to the full breadth of technology.

Then came the iron men - full AIs. Like all AIs in fiction, they flipped out and rebelled - there was a war and the iron men were destroyed - this gave mankind a soul-deep fear of technology and invention, lest another race of iron men were created.

Then the Age of Strife began and warp storms cut off every colony from every other. Mankind feared to create new technology, so they reluied on the STCs. But over the millenia, the STCs broke down. Today there are none left.

All that remains of the STC system are those hard-copy printouts created and saved during the Age of Strife.

The Mechanicus holds billions of such STC printouts. These are instructions for how to make things, everything. Bulldozers, bolters, hinges, locks, clocks, you-name-it.

The Mechanicus has very very little idea how any of it works. They know that if you make all these parts and put them together in this way, you get a bolter, but they don't know why it works. They don't know the principles upon which their technology operate.

All they know is that it works now, and the last time someone tried to make it work better, mankind was nearly wiped out by the Iron Men.

Because of all of this, the sum-total of mankinds technology can only grow by discovering more STC printouts or (the holy grail) a functioning STC. Conversely, mankinds technology shriniks every time the 'nids eat a forgeword or the mechanicus miss-file the STC for shoelaces.

I love story time!
And this is pretty much what happened.

.......grim.......and dark......

A similar but slightly different perspective:

In the Dark Age of Technology obviously humans had achieved an incredible level of technological advancement. But this advancement was also tied directly into their use of computers and artificial intelligence. Following our current trend of using computers in everything (from tanks to refrigerators) the human society at the time integrated AI into everything to optimize their efficiency.

So when the war with the Iron Men (AI) started it hurt, and hurt bad. Presumably a huge part of the war they fought involved electronic warfare like computer viruses and worms. You end up with a lot of murderous or just demented AI.

Humanity has now lost the ability to use AI since they don't trust them. This means the only ones even remotely capable of understanding the technology are tech-priests with massive amounts of augumentation to their brains, which is a big reason why only the highest clergymen are allowed to do research and reverse engineering, they are the only ones capable of it since they have the necessary level of augumentation.

Next we have 5k years of dark ages where a lot of stuff is just plain lost to war and heresy.

Finally the Emperor comes back and starts his crusade. We know at the time tech levels were much higher, and on the rise. Then the heresy happens.

The Ad-Mech is split by civil war. Mars was almost totally devestated. The two sides again use electronic warfare, this time fuled by chaos. Imagine what a daemon computer virus does? They sabatoge each others STCs, libraries, and factories. Almost all of the STCs on mars (the largest repository of them) are corrupted to the point that if you construct a las clip it may just decide to explode in your face and kill you.

At this point there are a ton of corrupted pseudo AI's, or "machine spirits" floating around that, if you don't treat them just right, will not work in the morning if you are lucky, and will kill you in your sleep if you are unlucky.

The Impirium has been at constant war for over 10k years. They can't send every infected tank back to get repaired by the few tech-priests capable of doing so, so they instill in every grunt the rituals necessary to keep their tank from getting ornery. After 10k years it becomes ritualized.

Since messing with a tank without significant expertise can anger the machine spirit or break the delicate components that no one outside of high ranking ad-mech priests understand, modification becomes taboo.

New technology and research is also dangerous, so it becomes taboo.

Since they no longer trust AI only the most senior tech priests with the most powerful mental augumentations are smart enough to do research, to the idea of anyone else doing research or messing with technology becomes taboo.

They are at war, and need every advantage they can get, but new research would only produce inferior technology, and they cannot spare the priests to do the research, so it becomes, again, TABOO.

Finding new STCs, a very real possability right after the fall of the Emperor, was a far more efficient use of time than researching new technology. After 10k years of following this philosophy the idea of doing anything EXCEPT finding STCs has become taboo.

Now in the LONG run, yes research is a better investment, but the imperium has not been in a position to look ahead for a very long time. Their situation is too desperate for planning, so they react.

Riplikash and Azezel have summed it up better than I could. However, I feel compelled to add the following to Rip's synopsis:

The term 'Machine Spirit' probably initially referred to incredibly complex programming. (Smart enough that a layman might even consider it AI, even if it was not AI by technical definitions.) The rituals performed to placate the Machine Spirits were initially designed to, as Rip states, keep the Machine Spirits from flipping out and turning on their users. However, since the Heresy, most of humanity has come to believe that ANY advanced machine (even a bolt pistol, which probably does NOT contain any kind of computers) also has a Machine Spirit. So there's a lot of people chanting and anointing machines for no good reason (even if they don't know it).

What rip says is certainly plausable - in fact, I like it - bit it is not cannon. What I posted is a summary of what is actually stated in the fluff.

I wouldn't say that the smelting of Ore in a non-standard way is Tech Heresy.



Feral/Feudal worlds eventually will reach a technological level at least consistant with what we have now(M2.010) and then the Impierium(if they haven't already) will assimilate the planet.

any technology, STC or no STC, will be reincorperated if it is useful. the Ad Mech sometimes will claim something is a STC when it really isn't, but no one will know the difference. any technology created in a natural way by Humans is fundamentally OK, but most of the time it will already be known or will be done better by existing tech.


the fact the Impierium's tech is only a fraction of what it was suggests that even the Eldar tech couldn't compare to Human tech at its height. Necron tech is the only kind that surpasses mankinds past achievments, and then only by a small margin.

the Ad Mech is constantly doing reaserch(albiet very slowly) Mostly reverse engeneering and attempted repair of damaged STCs. Xeno tech is constantly being studied, particularly Necron tech, to see if they can learn anything. the Ad Mech is activly trying to replicate Necron Gauss weapons(Necron codex)


it is the Inherent suspicion of Tech that makes any modification by untrained individuals a big nono. the Ad Mech is viciously pracitical, anything that is useful(that they are 100% sure won't blow up in your face) will be reincorperated. they will claim a STC was found/repaired and everyone will belive them.