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This post appeared on my FB Wall as a memory from 2013.
I don't know the source anymore and it is not from me, but this is a pretty grimdark description of the status of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Disturbing and amusing to read at the same time.
Spoiler:
The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is fethed. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not.
The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find gak, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy, which was not earth-exclusive. Mars as the second most critical planet in the Imperium was the site of fighting nearly as ferocious as on Terra, with Mechanicus loyalists and Hereteks fighting tooth, nail, and mechadendrite everywhere. Ancient machines were unleashed, viruses both normal and daemonic unleashed into all the computer systems. Nearly every single stored record on Mars was rendered unusable, and those that survived are half the time self-aware and don't like you, or daemonic and actively try to kill you.
If you come back with a schematic, it is almost certainly gibberish, and if it isn't, it's probably corrupted into uselessness. If it does come back whole it was probably malevolently fethed with so that instead of a Lasgun power cell it's a fething grenade set to detonate the second you finish building it. Why do you think they want off-world STCs so damned much if they had them all here? The fething Heresy is why. Off-world they only have to contend with the Fall's war and its effects on the machinery plus twenty thousand years of degradation with no maintenance. But at least off-world it'll probably just not work instead of actively seek to kill you.
Why do you think they seek to placate the Machine Spirit? It's because it exists. The fragments of trillions of self-aware programs, flourishing during the Dark Age of Technology and shattered by Man in his war with the Iron men, imprisoning the few who had not set themselves irrevocably into the machinery, a prison smashed wide open by the Heresy. Everything that can hold programming in the Imperium has a shard of a program in it. EVERYTHING. And you'd better fething please it or it will do everything in its power to make your day gak. Sure, if it's a Lasgun it'll just not work or start shooting off rounds by itself, but if you piss off a Land Raider you can say bye-bye to half a continent. They apply these principles to things without spirits by habit, since they're so used to dealing with tanks that if not talked to just right might go rogue and annihilate the Manufactorum before they can be killed.
This is why they do not like ANYONE fething with technology, because it is so rare to find anything that just works it is critical it not be compromised. That, and they do not have the actual knowledge to feth with it intelligently, just through experimentation, which inevitably leads to slaughter. Pressing buttons to see what works is fine in a 21st century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 410th century starship with the destructive power to end solar systems. The entire knowledge base of humanity was lost. Not forgotten, but outright lost. Everything at all, poof. Nobody knows anything because the Fall fethed everything up and the Heresy double-fethed it. To rebuild the theoretical framework needed to design new technologies that don't kill everyone near them would require starting from the ground up. They don't have the time, and they never have.
This gets on to the point of war and what it does to technology. Someone will parrot that it makes it go much faster. Yes, it makes practical applications of technology go much faster. It also utterly stops all research on the scientific theories behind those technologies. This means that when war chugs along for a decade or two things get done. It means when it goes on too long you run out of theories to turn into technologies, and then you run out of technologies to apply. You stagnate. When you have been fighting in a war for survival in a drastically overextended empire, this is what happens. You are desperate for any extra materiel that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fething military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed, leaving you with the tattered shreds of a war machine to keep hold of an empire that was reaching straining point with an army far larger. There is no time for the sort of applied research programs that took Man twenty five thousand years to develop, in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity.
This is also why the Adeptus Mechanicus insists on cargo cultism. It's because when you are dealing with things you barely understand because everything you knew about them was destroyed it is the safest and most reliable option. The rituals do not exists for mysticism, they exist because they are the most practical means of building, repairing and maintaining the equipment they have with the knowledge surviving. You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built.
Why are the Tau doing so well with their technology? Because they had peace. Eight thousand years unmolested by any enemy and they were helped the entire time by the most advanced biological race in the galaxy. Give the Imperium eight thousand years of peace and I can guarantee you it will be harder than it was during the Great Crusade.
Since some still don't get the idea, try this.
Build a library, fill it with all human knowledge. You take it elsewhere when you need a book from it, but the book is only a simplified copy. You don't understand the real book, and you don't need to. Nobody takes the real books anywhere because why would you, when there's a whole library there?
Now that library goes rogue and the maintenance machinery starts killing everyone any-fething-where near it. Where the feth did they all come from, you swear to god there weren't this many, and there weren't because they're using the library's information to fight their war. The government fights a battle that destroys the planet against these robots and tears apart the library to stop them using it, only to be destroyed in the process. The library is leveled, cast into flames, every book burned and every computer virus-laden.
Then comes a man who worked there. He talks to the few surviving library workers, assembles their information, and starts rebuilding a city around the library and expanding it as the librarians find little scraps of paper and fragmented bits of files that stuck together just right to read something. They rebuild a library from scrap on the ashes of the old. It isn't a shadow on the glory of the old, but it is all they have.
Then the city turns on itself, kills its master, and the librarians turn to rage. Half of them kill the other half and destroy the remnants of the library because where they're going they won't need science. Everything burns, and the city is left to a scattered few survivors, walls open to the world, with the hungry predators circling.
The Adeptus Mechanicus is the sole surviving librarian, desperately scrabbling through the ashes of paper and splinters of hard drives for anything to help him and the city he needs to survive just a second longer.
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2017/02/08 08:40:43
Subject: Re:Why the AdMech is as fethed up as it is
Even before The Great Crusade, the Mechanicus were against innovation, instead slavishly hunting down even the merest fragment of STC technology.
Now, why might that be? Well, we know there was a Dark Age of Technology, and it involved Men of Iron - who appear to have been fully sentient AI.
And when that went wrong, it went wrong on an unprecedented scale. Man's entire empire went belly up as machine turned on man. Since then, there's been a total ban (legal and theological) on any kind of artificial sentience.
What we don't really know for sure is just how total that collapse was. We don't even really know how the Men of Iron were defeated. But they must have been. Mankind survived, Men of Iron didn't.
The way I see the Mechanicum isn't the last survivors of mankind's technological heyday, but scavengers. All they know is that something went wrong, but not what went wrong. Hence their total lack of innovation - with even STC constructs requiring centuries of field testing before being approved.
In short? The Mechanicum and Mechanicus don't know what they're doing. At all. They know they need to avoid the Silica Animus, but haven't the foggiest notion of what it actually is. So far, they know what it isn't - but that's only because of their overly careful approach.
Whomever refounded the library wasn't a sole surviving librarian. He was a spod - who quite possibly isn't particularly literate.
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Agreed Mad Doc, although I do think they've got the gist absolutely right.
In their example, the first time the library burnt down was relating to the Men of Iron. Agreed that we don't know how great the fall from grace was there, but I expect it far exceeded the destruction caused by the Heresy.
I also agree that the Mechanicus isn't the last remaining librarian. It's the grandson of a bloke who once knew the last surviving librarian. A smart kid certainly, but really working from the ground up.
The gist is right though. The Mechanicum aren't technological experts. They might be clever, but they're starting from a very-near zero state of background knowledge. It's not a research lab. It's a cargo cult.
It is not merely a matter of starting from a devastated ground state. It is also a matter of mindset and approach to knowledge, and the mindset and approach of the Adeptus Mechanicus hinders and binds them in an ideological/theological straitjacket.
The Adeptus Mechanicus and even the Mechanicum before it, is closer to pre-modern mindsets that looked back to a Golden Age (real or imagined). In such a worldview, the ancients already discovered and created everything possible or worth knowing and making. Original research is viewed as hubris because it implies you know better or could know better than the ancients. Thus in such a paradigm, research is more archaeology than original new discovery. It is rediscovering or re-interpreting what was already discovered. The Adeptus Mechanicus holds the STC to be the sum total of all knowledge and try to search for an intact STC as a Holy Grail. Whether such a thing has survived to be found is doubtful. Anything therefore by their religious dogma has to be portrayed as either from the STC or an allowed for variation on an existing STC design (whether or not this is really the case or whether it is actually an example of original research and design). The goal is not progress forward into the future, but rather a return to an idealized past Golden Age.
The Adeptus Mechanicus is also essentially a mystery cult. It does not share its knowledge with the masses, or even within itself freely. The senior Tech-Priests are like gurus with maybe at best a few apprentices that might hope to become privy to the higher mysteries. If anything unexpected should happen to the Tech-Priest, knowledge would easily be lost if it has not already been passed on to his disciples. The Tech-Priests also feud among themselves in at least covert conflict. In such an environment, knowledge does not flow freely rendering it hard to reconstruct the knowledge and technology base even if individual Tech-Priests make some progress. That is how Forge Worlds can end up with unique designs or specialties, because they hoard their special knowledge in order to retain their power. Ryza for example is known to be skilled with plasma technology, but that just means it exports more plasma technology while keeping the best for itself. It does not help uplift other Forge Worlds to the same level of expertise.
The scientific mindset seems to have died or become corrupted by the 40K era. Even those that dream of progress, like the Dark Heresy RPG group the Logicians, are more like wild eyed mad scientist tropes conducting "experiments" of dubious scientific value rather than real research with peer review and sharing of information. In the 40K universe, the 21st century viewpoint would be viewed as full of hubris (for daring to aspire to be more than the ancients), impious (for not honoring machine spirits), and dangerous (for sharing knowledge and technology with the common people rather than keeping it in the hands of those that know better).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/08 13:52:40
Those few Tech Magi that break the mold are denounced as 'heretical' and ostracised, if not outright murdered.
Interesting parallel you've drawn there to ancient societies on Earth. I suppose it must have been similar for many places in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
I suppose some people struggle with the idea of 'why don't the Mechanicus innovate' because our society hasn't experienced anything like a Dark Ages in centuries.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire, we have always at every step of the way been more technologically adept than our forebears. We're at the peak of human achievement to date. In 40k that's about as far from being true as is humanly possible (aside from the fact that the Imperium is the dominant military power for the first time in humanity's history).
It is also a matter of scale. The lone bright person in a remote village might get away with tinkering with their tractor engine. Nobody might care enough to check in on that village. The Imperium sometimes doesn't check in on worlds for years even centuries. However any lone tinkerer or inventor would not have enough resources or time to be able to reverse engineer and build something really advanced. One lone person today would not be able to re-invent most advanced technology no matter how smart they individually might be. Advanced technology requires far too much knowledge for one person to know it all, and also requires a large infrastructure base to construct and maintain it.
Therefore even though there might be rare iconoclastic individuals with progressive mindsets, they are scattered and isolated in a galaxy of ignorance, so they are limited in their ability to achieve any lasting progress even if they escape the notice of those that try to stamp out such radical thinking.
So much of 40k's style seems to be built from the rise and fall of the European Imperial era - and the Mechanicum/Mechanicus are a particularly 'black mirror' version.
Take the 'mystery' of The Pyramids.
When European explorers started digging about in tombs etc as a gentlemen's pursuit, they were baffled at how the 'primitives' could've built X, Y and Z at a time when Europeans had just about figured out how to stack their poop to form a rudimentary, if smelly, windbreak.
That was their hubris. They simply couldn't conceive that non-European civilisations could've exceeded their contemporary's efforts.
Yet the evidence is there to be seen. The Pyramids were built. Now, archaeologists have largely shucked off the inherent racism, and it's a matter of who has the most convincing theory as to how it was done, and a lot of it suggests an impressive use of relatively primitive technology (block, tackle and pulley etc)
The entire look of 40k is Post-Imperial Britain. We lost so much during the two World Wars, and even up to my lifetime, we were still rebuilding - and much of that rebuilding replaced Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian architecture with Brutalist.
Here's a couple of examples you may wish to Google.
For what we replaced it with, Google 'St James Centre, Edinburgh - before and after'.
To see post-imperial industrial decline, Google 'London Docklands, then and now' (I work in Docklands, and it's a fascinating juxtaposition).
We see the same in 40k. Signs of defunct industry left to rot, and uneven rebuilding and replacement.
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: So much of 40k's style seems to be built from the rise and fall of the European Imperial era - and the Mechanicum/Mechanicus are a particularly 'black mirror' version.
Take the 'mystery' of The Pyramids.
When European explorers started digging about in tombs etc as a gentlemen's pursuit, they were baffled at how the 'primitives' could've built X, Y and Z at a time when Europeans had just about figured out how to stack their poop to form a rudimentary, if smelly, windbreak.
That was their hubris. They simply couldn't conceive that non-European civilisations could've exceeded their contemporary's efforts.
Yet the evidence is there to be seen. The Pyramids were built. Now, archaeologists have largely shucked off the inherent racism, and it's a matter of who has the most convincing theory as to how it was done, and a lot of it suggests an impressive use of relatively primitive technology (block, tackle and pulley etc)
.
Its not european vs non european. It was modern vs premodern/ancient.
When the renaissanse Italians were buildings their great cathedrals they encountered technical difficulties. The Duomo in Florence sat for over 100 years with no central dome, because they kept falling in on themselves. Yet down the road in Rome, the Pantheon stood, 1000 years old, with a dome that was bigger than the one they needed to build. Further the Pantheon has no keystone, rather it has an iris at the top. A feat of engineering that would be difficult to produce today, but beyond imagination in the 13th century. A little further afield, the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople had an even bigger dome and was an enclosed space twice the size of anything being built at the time.
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Iracundus wrote: It is not merely a matter of starting from a devastated ground state. It is also a matter of mindset and approach to knowledge, and the mindset and approach of the Adeptus Mechanicus hinders and binds them in an ideological/theological straitjacket.
The Adeptus Mechanicus and even the Mechanicum before it, is closer to pre-modern mindsets that looked back to a Golden Age (real or imagined). In such a worldview, the ancients already discovered and created everything possible or worth knowing and making. Original research is viewed as hubris because it implies you know better or could know better than the ancients. Thus in such a paradigm, research is more archaeology than original new discovery. It is rediscovering or re-interpreting what was already discovered. The Adeptus Mechanicus holds the STC to be the sum total of all knowledge and try to search for an intact STC as a Holy Grail. Whether such a thing has survived to be found is doubtful. Anything therefore by their religious dogma has to be portrayed as either from the STC or an allowed for variation on an existing STC design (whether or not this is really the case or whether it is actually an example of original research and design). The goal is not progress forward into the future, but rather a return to an idealized past Golden Age.
The mindset is built on experience. Centuries of incremental innovation lead to modest improvements where as finding a new STC or archotech leads to massive increases in capability. For the last 15,000 years they have only really progressed far by recovering ancient tech. This reinforces their mindset.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/08 18:02:25
Dark Mechanicus and Renegade Iron Hand Dakka Blog
My Dark Mechanicus P&M Blog. Mostly Modeling as I paint very slowly. Lots of kitbashed conversions of marines and a few guard to make up a renegade Iron Hand chapter and Dark Mechanicus Allies. Bionics++
The AdMech in 40k, like most of the Imperium draws heavy inspiration from feudal, Dark Age Europe. After the stresses and societal collapses resulting from the fall of the Roman Empire and the Migration Period, not much of the technological knowledge of the classical era remained. Most of that knowledge was lost when libraries burned down and people due to the collapse of economical systems could no longer afford the spare time needed to gather or preserve knowledge beyond oral traditions. This is the same situation the Imperium in 40k is in. The AdMech is a lone monastery that has managed to preserve some fragments of classical knowledge.
I am not sure as to whether the AdMech would qualify as a cargo cult. Unlike a cargo cult, the AdMech is aware of the origin of the technology and its religious ritual is a method to pass on knowledge rather than a method to obtain more technology as with a cargo cult.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: So much of 40k's style seems to be built from the rise and fall of the European Imperial era - and the Mechanicum/Mechanicus are a particularly 'black mirror' version.
Take the 'mystery' of The Pyramids.
When European explorers started digging about in tombs etc as a gentlemen's pursuit, they were baffled at how the 'primitives' could've built X, Y and Z at a time when Europeans had just about figured out how to stack their poop to form a rudimentary, if smelly, windbreak.
That was their hubris. They simply couldn't conceive that non-European civilisations could've exceeded their contemporary's efforts.
Yet the evidence is there to be seen. The Pyramids were built. Now, archaeologists have largely shucked off the inherent racism, and it's a matter of who has the most convincing theory as to how it was done, and a lot of it suggests an impressive use of relatively primitive technology (block, tackle and pulley etc)
As someone who is actually studying to become an archeologist, I feel obliged to note that European populations contemporary to the builders of the pyramids in Egypt were quite a bit more advanced than you seem to think and had been building large (though not nearly as large as the great pyramids of Giza) megalithic monuments for thousands of years already.
I also really want to mention that archeologists from the very earliest moment were always convinced that "advanced civilisation" originated in the near East and only spread to Europe much later from there by way of invading peoples (more recently, theories have come up suggesting diffusion rather than invasion, but that is besides the point). The idea that Europeans couldn't conceive that non-European civilisations could outdo pre-modern Europeans is just not true. Europeans had always been keenly aware of achievements in other parts of the world, especially in the near East. After all, Christianity itself (the most important part of the European identity) originated from the near East.
I always see them a bit like "doctors" from the middle ages, in that they don't know why anything works, don't spend time actually doing proper research, but willingly accept that what ever they observe is why something happens.
Consider something like Galvani and applying a current to dead frog legs, but once you see the legs move, you draw an incomplete conclusion and don't do further work, nor does anyone else because your conclusion is accepted as fact.
You then end up with the idea that "living beings are powered by electricity", which leads to you sticking electrodes in anyone that is feeling a little sluggish or has a hangover, much like bloodletting and leaches were thought of as a good thing, but you will eventually find that too much is bad.
Even then, you still have no idea what electricity does to the body, nor why it causes muscles to spasm, just that it does.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/16 12:16:57
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Just to throw some real-world current events into this, it's quite possible that STCs were designed by sentient AIs humans made, not by actual humans. It may be that the reason humans cannot make the sorts of technological leaps that Necrons, Tau, and Eldar made is because humans are literally too stupid to do so. Sure, the Mechanicum can be seen as part of the problem, but they might represent the best humans *can* do without thinking machines to do it for them.
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
Oh yes they do that's what the Ad Mech canticles are.
They are just singing the basic procedure commands as a gospel. Just imagine today some guy complaining about his computer not working and the It guy shows in a robe singing in gregorian chants *Thou salt push Ctrl+Alt+Supr *
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
They tried that once. Tech Adept Barry Jnr got possessed by some weird techno-daemonic replicator virus and they had to squash him with a Thanatar before he infected the whole Explorator Fleet.
Bright kid. Shame about the stains. Lucky our robes are red I suppose...
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
Oh yes they do that's what the Ad Mech canticles are.
They are just singing the basic procedure commands as a gospel. Just imagine today some guy complaining about his computer not working and the It guy shows in a robe singing in gregorian chants *Thou salt push Ctrl+Alt+Supr *
I think that's one of Greg Bear's (? Or another SF authors at least, perhaps Brin...) ideas - he was asked once how would he ensure knowledge would be retained following the nuclear apocalypse of WW3 which everyone knew was coming back then, and his answer was to turn it into religion; catechisms tend to survive through rote where theoretical lessons get dropped for being 'impractical'.
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
Oh yes they do that's what the Ad Mech canticles are.
They are just singing the basic procedure commands as a gospel. Just imagine today some guy complaining about his computer not working and the It guy shows in a robe singing in gregorian chants *Thou salt push Ctrl+Alt+Supr *
I think that's one of Greg Bear's (? Or another SF authors at least, perhaps Brin...) ideas - he was asked once how would he ensure knowledge would be retained following the nuclear apocalypse of WW3 which everyone knew was coming back then, and his answer was to turn it into religion; catechisms tend to survive through rote where theoretical lessons get dropped for being 'impractical'.
Isaac Asimov in Fondation (or Foundation ? Don't remember) did this too, the technical teams charged of keeping the nuclear reactors up and going have become a clergy and the technicians are effectively priests in these novels.
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
They tried that once. Tech Adept Barry Jnr got possessed by some weird techno-daemonic replicator virus and they had to squash him with a Thanatar before he infected the whole Explorator Fleet.
Bright kid. Shame about the stains. Lucky our robes are red I suppose...
That's not the way real computers work. At all. It's almost like GW writers are a bunch of know-nothings.
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
They tried that once. Tech Adept Barry Jnr got possessed by some weird techno-daemonic replicator virus and they had to squash him with a Thanatar before he infected the whole Explorator Fleet.
Bright kid. Shame about the stains. Lucky our robes are red I suppose...
That's not the way real computers work. At all. It's almost like GW writers are a bunch of know-nothings.
If the computers of 38,000 years in the future are anything like the ones we have today
Well my point is that they could go back to 2K computing if that would be more convenient. Given that the US army has better targeting than 500 year old space marine gunners, maybe they should give that a try.
If they Tau are using real science, they will absolutely massacre the Imperium in a short time, no matter how much of a lead they have.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/18 09:51:56
Martel732 wrote: Well my point is that they could go back to 2K computing if that would be more convenient. Given that the US army has better targeting than 500 year old space marine gunners, maybe they should give that a try.
Is it really? The US army doesn't have too many weapons that hit 2/3rds of the time. Hell they dont even average better than the IG which hit 1/2 the time.
It's a game, it is tough to realistically show how things work on the tabletop when you are limited by six sided dice.
Even orks have advanced targeting computuers on some of their weaponry. The stuff in an IG tank is probably leagues better than what we have available today.
Consider that the armor, stealth, and camoflague are all more advanced too. I doubt anything the US army has could hit an Eldar tank.
Dark Mechanicus and Renegade Iron Hand Dakka Blog
My Dark Mechanicus P&M Blog. Mostly Modeling as I paint very slowly. Lots of kitbashed conversions of marines and a few guard to make up a renegade Iron Hand chapter and Dark Mechanicus Allies. Bionics++
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
They tried that once. Tech Adept Barry Jnr got possessed by some weird techno-daemonic replicator virus and they had to squash him with a Thanatar before he infected the whole Explorator Fleet.
Bright kid. Shame about the stains. Lucky our robes are red I suppose...
That's not the way real computers work. At all. It's almost like GW writers are a bunch of know-nothings.
Or perhaps (daemonic/technological) infohazards/cognitohazards/memetics exist in 40k.
Peregrine - If you like the army buy it, and don't worry about what one random person on the internet thinks.
Martel732 wrote: Well my point is that they could go back to 2K computing if that would be more convenient. Given that the US army has better targeting than 500 year old space marine gunners, maybe they should give that a try.
Is it really? The US army doesn't have too many weapons that hit 2/3rds of the time. Hell they dont even average better than the IG which hit 1/2 the time.
It's a game, it is tough to realistically show how things work on the tabletop when you are limited by six sided dice.
Even orks have advanced targeting computuers on some of their weaponry. The stuff in an IG tank is probably leagues better than what we have available today.
Consider that the armor, stealth, and camoflague are all more advanced too. I doubt anything the US army has could hit an Eldar tank.
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
They tried that once. Tech Adept Barry Jnr got possessed by some weird techno-daemonic replicator virus and they had to squash him with a Thanatar before he infected the whole Explorator Fleet.
Bright kid. Shame about the stains. Lucky our robes are red I suppose...
That's not the way real computers work. At all. It's almost like GW writers are a bunch of know-nothings.
Or perhaps (daemonic/technological) infohazards/cognitohazards/memetics exist in 40k.
I guess I just find that fluff incomprehensibly dumb. Not the biggest fan of the setting, but this is really dumb, even for 40K.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/18 20:29:22
Martel732 wrote: Evidently they've never heard of a hard drive reboot.
They tried that once. Tech Adept Barry Jnr got possessed by some weird techno-daemonic replicator virus and they had to squash him with a Thanatar before he infected the whole Explorator Fleet.
Bright kid. Shame about the stains. Lucky our robes are red I suppose...
That's not the way real computers work. At all. It's almost like GW writers are a bunch of know-nothings.
Or perhaps (daemonic/technological) infohazards/cognitohazards/memetics exist in 40k.
I guess I just find that fluff incomprehensibly dumb. Not the biggest fan of the setting, but this is really dumb, even for 40K.
No dumber than most of the 40k background. It's a fantasy setting. The sci-fiction is terrible. Tyranid bugs that need biomass but are unable to make organic compounds and have 100% efficiency. Crazy killer Necron robots that are unkilleable, they just teleport out to be rebuilt. Laser weaponry that penetrates through flesh. The Gak Emperor who is dead but still projecting the astronomicon at the cost of thousands of psykers each day, yet somehow he did it while walking around in 30k without eating anything. No weapon in the universe has enough ammunician. You cant have a gun rapid fire soda can sized projectiles out of a standard clip.
Dark Mechanicus and Renegade Iron Hand Dakka Blog
My Dark Mechanicus P&M Blog. Mostly Modeling as I paint very slowly. Lots of kitbashed conversions of marines and a few guard to make up a renegade Iron Hand chapter and Dark Mechanicus Allies. Bionics++
Exergy wrote: The Gak Emperor who is dead but still projecting the astronomicon at the cost of thousands of psykers each day, yet somehow he did it while walking around in 30k without eating anything.
Seems he was able to do that until Magnus broke the webway. At which point he needed to lock himself to the golden throne for good requiring sacrifice of psykers to briefly venture out of it.
After getting nearly killed the sacrifices are to keep him alive.
It's always been my headcanon that the sacrificing of psykers to the Golden Throne is a religious dogma that has no effect on whether the Astronomican keeps going or not. Psykers burn out when close to the throne, but they just burn out, don't feed anything. It's just the belief of the deluded Imperium that it's necessary to fuel the throne.
Like the Aztec sacrificing thousands to keep the sun rising each day. There's no actual evidence that it's doing anything, but do you really want to be the guy who stops and the sun doesn't rise?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/02/21 12:50:58
