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So I recently got an Imperial Knight and I am reading the fluff in the codex where I come to a point where it says that machines did not become sentient until basically human psykers became wide spread because the fall of the Eldar let our psychic abilities flourish. This has gotten me curious about this and is there anything else to read on this subject? It is only a quick line in the Imperial Knight codex without much explanation of why the machines of man got their machine spirit because more and more human psykers appeared and I want to know more about it. Is there any Ad Mech books that go into it? It happens during the Age of Strife before the rising of the Emperor so I don't know how much information there would be on it. It only says the the Knights and their nobles rejected this notion because the Knight armor themselves already had a semblance of a machine spirits since the Noble's mind is always imprinted into the Knight armor itself. Anyone got more info on this at all?

The Kaban Project is about a sentient machine, can not remember if there is a lot of lore in there . But a good read regardless.

First I've heard of it being anything to do with the psychic awakening of mankind.

During the Dark Age of Technology, the Mechanicum created the Men of Iron, artificial intelligences that acted as soldiers and manual labourers. The Men of Iron rebelled, and fought a long and bloody war against the human empire of the time, bringing it to its knees. In the aftermath, the Mechanicum banned AI research completely and founded the Omnissian cult as a way of ensuring that even if the empire did fall, some knowledge would remain and give any survivors the chance to rebuild eventually.

What ever happened to the fluff where the men of iron were possessed due to having sentience but no soul to protect them from possession, and the evolution to the men of gold, almost indistinguishable from humans

 Envihon wrote:
So I recently got an Imperial Knight and I am reading the fluff in the codex where I come to a point where it says that machines did not become sentient until basically human psykers became wide spread because the fall of the Eldar let our psychic abilities flourish. This has gotten me curious about this and is there anything else to read on this subject? It is only a quick line in the Imperial Knight codex without much explanation of why the machines of man got their machine spirit because more and more human psykers appeared and I want to know more about it. Is there any Ad Mech books that go into it? It happens during the Age of Strife before the rising of the Emperor so I don't know how much information there would be on it. It only says the the Knights and their nobles rejected this notion because the Knight armor themselves already had a semblance of a machine spirits since the Noble's mind is always imprinted into the Knight armor itself. Anyone got more info on this at all?

That doesn't make any sense, as there were human psykers long before the Fall of the Eldar. The Fall basically allowed for the Great Crusade to begin, and by that time there were plenty of psykers and had been since like, what, M15?

 Psienesis wrote:

 Envihon wrote:
So I recently got an Imperial Knight and I am reading the fluff in the codex where I come to a point where it says that machines did not become sentient until basically human psykers became wide spread because the fall of the Eldar let our psychic abilities flourish. This has gotten me curious about this and is there anything else to read on this subject? It is only a quick line in the Imperial Knight codex without much explanation of why the machines of man got their machine spirit because more and more human psykers appeared and I want to know more about it. Is there any Ad Mech books that go into it? It happens during the Age of Strife before the rising of the Emperor so I don't know how much information there would be on it. It only says the the Knights and their nobles rejected this notion because the Knight armor themselves already had a semblance of a machine spirits since the Noble's mind is always imprinted into the Knight armor itself. Anyone got more info on this at all?

That doesn't make any sense, as there were human psykers long before the Fall of the Eldar. The Fall basically allowed for the Great Crusade to begin, and by that time there were plenty of psykers and had been since like, what, M15?

That is largely my problem with it but within it the Imperial Knight codex it says thus: "Around M22, Mankind's vast galactic empire began to suffer a pandemic of terrible wars and massive invasions, caused, at least in part, by the emergence of the first human psykers and the widespread use of quai-sentient machines." It goes on to say about how much the Knightly houses rejected this new technology and liked to rely on the old technology that their Knight armor was based on.

 Envihon wrote:
That is largely my problem with it but within it the Imperial Knight codex it says thus: "Around M22, Mankind's vast galactic empire began to suffer a pandemic of terrible wars and massive invasions, caused, at least in part, by the emergence of the first human psykers and the widespread use of quai-sentient machines." It goes on to say about how much the Knightly houses rejected this new technology and liked to rely on the old technology that their Knight armor was based on.

It seems likely that correlation does not equal causation. Both were major problems faced as part of the Dark Age of Technology/Age of Strife, but it's doubtful that one caused the other. It's more likely that both were the result of the same factor- say humanity and it's empire hitting a certain critical mass of size- more human population means statistically more psykers, which means more chances for them to go wrong. And a larger, more powerful empire means AI problems have a much easier chance to grow into real threats, rather than a couple hundred machines on a planet, large multi-system pocket empires could fall.

Here is the Journal of Keeper Cripias from the 2nd Ed Rulebook. It gives an account of the war between the Iron Menn, the soulless A.I, and Stone Men, what could possibly be proto - Mechanicum. It also goes somewhat into the Age of Strife.

http://ifearnoevil.tripod.com/warhammer/journal.htm

Here is fluff from Epic on the birth of the Mechanicum and how it was founded during the time of the Age of Strife, it also mentions how the Knight Worlds came around.

http://web.archive.org/web/20120826151238/http://www.gamehobby.net/subject_indexes/subject_epic_40k.html

I cannot locate where else it mentions the emergence of human psykers as a cause, but there are other indications of this elsewhere.

Continue digging and we have this

http://web.archive.org/web/20120505143341/http://www.gamehobby.net/subject_indexes/subject_wh40k_space_marines.html

The Age of Strife lasted from approximately the 26th millennium to the beginning of 31st (i.e. roughly from 25000 AD to 30000 AD - further references to dates are given in terms of millennia). During these five thousand years the ancient pan-galactic human civilisation of the past broke down and was replaced by many thousands of local civilisations based around either a single solar system or, occasionally, a small duster of nearby stars. The reason this happened is that warp travel (the means by which spacecraft travel throughout the galaxy) became dangerous and eventually impossible due to colossal disturbances in the fabric of the warp. These disturbances, known as warp storms, were caused by the growth of the Chaos Power Slaanesh.

So it's a combination of factors, the war between the Iron and Stone Men, the gestation period of Slaanesh before its birth and the emergence of human psykers.

Entirely non related but I stumbled across this in the Rogue Trader rulebook - Lyyn Elgonsen - Custodian of the Dark Angels

 MajorWesJanson wrote:

 Envihon wrote:
That is largely my problem with it but within it the Imperial Knight codex it says thus: "Around M22, Mankind's vast galactic empire began to suffer a pandemic of terrible wars and massive invasions, caused, at least in part, by the emergence of the first human psykers and the widespread use of quai-sentient machines." It goes on to say about how much the Knightly houses rejected this new technology and liked to rely on the old technology that their Knight armor was based on.

It seems likely that correlation does not equal causation. Both were major problems faced as part of the Dark Age of Technology/Age of Strife, but it's doubtful that one caused the other. It's more likely that both were the result of the same factor- say humanity and it's empire hitting a certain critical mass of size- more human population means statistically more psykers, which means more chances for them to go wrong. And a larger, more powerful empire means AI problems have a much easier chance to grow into real threats, rather than a couple hundred machines on a planet, large multi-system pocket empires could fall.

Machine spirit's can still be possessed by daemons though, showing that they have a connection to the warp and thus a connection to psykers. This is further backed up by stories of the Grey Knight Techmarines being able to use their psychic abilities to gain connection with the machine spirit in a way that non-psyker techmarines can not so the connections isn't that far fetched.