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Possibly as tools to combat chaos. They would ultimately be disposed of, but would be useful in defeating it.

 Psienesis wrote:
Why would the Emperor, who intended to guide humanity through its apotheosis into a fully-psychic race and the masters of the galaxy, create non-psykers?

I believe he wanted Humanity to be fully psychic and incorruptible as he was but that evolution would take many millenia.

So maybe blanks were a good way of keeping humanity relatively safe or just another form of weapon to combat Chaos.

 Psienesis wrote:
Why would the Emperor, who intended to guide humanity through its apotheosis into a fully-psychic race and the masters of the galaxy, create non-psykers?

The Emp was hiding in the shadows at that time.
Could have been a unforeseen consequence of a early version of the SM project.
Could be intentionally trying to hold the psykers down to make them pop up more.
Or the same reason he created the Thunder Warriors and Space Marines, a means to a end.

Great theories, guys, except for two flaws.

One: The Necrons are confirmed as the source of the Pariah gene.

Two: The reason everyone says the Men of Iron are robots, is because we've not only seen chaos-corrupted Men of Iron in First and Only, we have the fact that the Mechanicus' law against AI was made because of the Men of Iron rebelling. Even if they were biological in nature, the Men of Iron were A.I. slaves, which is the long-hand way of saying; robots.

Robots being a word derived from the Czech "Robota" or "forced labourer".

New-crons don't make a mention of the Pariah gene and humanity, unless I missed something somewhere. Either way, the timelines don't line up. The Necrons were in the Great Sleep millions of years before the genetic strain that would become humanity existed. Anti-social animals wouldn't be capable of propagating.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Great theories, guys, except for two flaws.

One: The Necrons are confirmed as the source of the Pariah gene.

Two: The reason everyone says the Men of Iron are robots, is because we've not only seen chaos-corrupted Men of Iron in First and Only, we have the fact that the Mechanicus' law against AI was made because of the Men of Iron rebelling. Even if they were biological in nature, the Men of Iron were A.I. slaves, which is the long-hand way of saying; robots.

Robots being a word derived from the Czech "Robota" or "forced labourer".

The reason everyone says the Men of Iron are robots is because of the word Iron.
Both sides used AI. A AI thats grown sentiet and used then uses AI doesnt make much sense. The clean up after the men of Iron were defeated could have been enough of a problem to say to feth with it.
You saw a possibly khaos infused STC, that may or may not have been a weapon used by the men of iron.

 Psienesis wrote:
New-crons don't make a mention of the Pariah gene and humanity, unless I missed something somewhere. Either way, the timelines don't line up. The Necrons were in the Great Sleep millions of years before the genetic strain that would become humanity existed. Anti-social animals wouldn't be capable of propagating.

Not all of them. Szarekh's been active the whole time, albeit on a pilgrimmage. Trollzyn apparently hung out with the Grey Knights and Guilliman for a while during the Scouring.

the ancient - both sides used AIs? Source for that please?

actually In First and Only the STC was surrounded by switched off me. Of iron and described as metal robots. And when the machine was switched on the one that came out was black horns and spikes, and the others all bowed to it. They are clearly described as being mechanical.

What was with the Chaos androids in Space Crusade? We're those things related to the iron men?

They were just "androids". Not sure if there was any mention of being Chaos.

The Dreadnaughts from Space Crusade were quite awesome too!

 Furyou Miko wrote:


the ancient - both sides used AIs? Source for that please?

1st page, 6th post. I think it came from the back of the 3rd ed rule book?
Although it seems to have been edited from when I last read it, that will teach me to not take fluff as whats actually printed.
Now I'm going to have to dig through the wardrobe to check what it actually says now. Grrr. Although it still mentions Iron race. I dont think you label AI as a race.

The Dark Age of Technology is an era of machines and artificial devices, used by the Stone Men. and later the Iron Men. I can't see MOI later using artificial devices, wouldn't they have started with them.
Could have been when the Necrons had inserted the Pariah gene, if that takes your fancy.

I found something that may be some sort of "Lesser" Man of Iron, the Goleph from Dark Heresy Radical's Handbook. Those things are pretty tough honestly, twin power blades for hands and they "fire" monoblades. They are very fast (like Eldar fast) and are almost as tough and strong as an ork (they just dont have the Unnatural Str and Toughness traits) on top of this they see all motion within 100 meters as long as there is air and some sort of path to the target, they also see heat but require LoS for that.

So ya, it these are crappy Men of Iron, i dont want to know what the true ones are.

 Bookwrack wrote:

Mellow wrote:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

It's just too close. It makes me think GW didn't come up with anything original.

On that page there's a legends of dune which is basically the mechanicus creating Titans. (They even have the same name?!)

Damn you, evil time traveling GW, you think you're so clever, stealing ideas 15, 20 years before they were even written! But we're on to you!

Can't tell if sarcasm or you don't realise that a lot of this was mentioned in the first Dune book which was released in 1965...

Men of Stone were probably silicon-based AIs.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
As formidable as Humans were supposed to be back then, I would assume they did something like a computer virus. I'm sure it had to be some sort of superweapon, to completely eradicate them.

For a short time after the Necrons were released in 2nd edition and then the blurb about the Men of Iron in the 3rd edition rulebook, I hoped that when they got their first real codex they were going to be some sort of Men of Iron remnants, long-buried and back to exterminate the humans.

That would be so much better than the current lore, IMO.

omg would it

totes, it would be, like, so, totally awesome

This was originally what they were hinting at, and originally what they were probably planning. The OLD old fluff sure seems to point in that direction. Then the big update came and they decided to go with the C'tan and all that stuff, nixing this idea. When you think about it, there are really three periods of Necron fluff, the Newcrons, Oldcrons, and OLDoldcrons. The OLDoldcrons just have such vague fluff that it doesn't directly contradict any of the newer stuff, but they were probably originally meant to be the Men of Iron at one point.

As far as the topic here, aren't there some other, more direct references to Men of Iron in canon 40k stories?

There's an old Inferno comic where marines fight against a bunch of robots. The narration makes it clear that the robots are really just puppets for one big AI that controls them all. It is strongly hinted that this is an old STC making Men of Iron, in a very similar situation to the Gaunt's Ghosts story.This solves the problem of why AI's would send other AI's to fight. They don't. The AI is the program. The robots they fight with are just metal shells the AI's control remotely. They aren't actually sentient. BTW, the robots in this story looked a little different than Necrons, and actually a little LESS human. Some of them had six limbs and other stuff.

I haven't read this one, but supposedly a character appears in one story who's this guy with a bionic eye, but he's supposedly not actually human and really ancient. And some people have taken from this story that the character actually IS the bionic eye, controlling the man like a puppet, and has been moving from host to host for thousands of years. This site was where I first heard about this story, and I wish I could remember what the heck it was, and what the guy's name was. It was one word, started with "K," and wasn't a normal sounding name.

If both these sources actually ARE references to the Men of Iron, then they're actually quite different than a lot of people picture them. They're not "robots," they're computer programs. They can hack into and use pretty much any technology, and, if "K" is one, can even hack into human brains. If this is the case, the war with the Iron Men was an entirely different kind of war from anything being fought in 40k now. It was a hacking war, and humanity probably won by unleashing super computer viruses, wiping out their own technology and bombing themselves back into the stone age to prevent the Men of Iron from killing them all. This would also explain how humanity managed to win the war without destroying all life in the galaxy, what with all the super-black-hole-bombs and other ridiculously lethal super weapons they had at that point.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Great theories, guys, except for two flaws.

One: The Necrons are confirmed as the source of the Pariah gene.

Two: The reason everyone says the Men of Iron are robots, is because we've not only seen chaos-corrupted Men of Iron in First and Only, we have the fact that the Mechanicus' law against AI was made because of the Men of Iron rebelling. Even if they were biological in nature, the Men of Iron were A.I. slaves, which is the long-hand way of saying; robots.

Robots being a word derived from the Czech "Robota" or "forced labourer".

"robota" means work its slang , "forced labourer" is "otrok"

 fallinq wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
As formidable as Humans were supposed to be back then, I would assume they did something like a computer virus. I'm sure it had to be some sort of superweapon, to completely eradicate them.

For a short time after the Necrons were released in 2nd edition and then the blurb about the Men of Iron in the 3rd edition rulebook, I hoped that when they got their first real codex they were going to be some sort of Men of Iron remnants, long-buried and back to exterminate the humans.

That would be so much better than the current lore, IMO.

omg would it

totes, it would be, like, so, totally awesome

This was originally what they were hinting at, and originally what they were probably planning. The OLD old fluff sure seems to point in that direction. Then the big update came and they decided to go with the C'tan and all that stuff, nixing this idea. When you think about it, there are really three periods of Necron fluff, the Newcrons, Oldcrons, and OLDoldcrons. The OLDoldcrons just have such vague fluff that it doesn't directly contradict any of the newer stuff, but they were probably originally meant to be the Men of Iron at one point.

As far as the topic here, aren't there some other, more direct references to Men of Iron in canon 40k stories?

There's an old Inferno comic where marines fight against a bunch of robots. The narration makes it clear that the robots are really just puppets for one big AI that controls them all. It is strongly hinted that this is an old STC making Men of Iron, in a very similar situation to the Gaunt's Ghosts story.This solves the problem of why AI's would send other AI's to fight. They don't. The AI is the program. The robots they fight with are just metal shells the AI's control remotely. They aren't actually sentient. BTW, the robots in this story looked a little different than Necrons, and actually a little LESS human. Some of them had six limbs and other stuff.

I haven't read this one, but supposedly a character appears in one story who's this guy with a bionic eye, but he's supposedly not actually human and really ancient. And some people have taken from this story that the character actually IS the bionic eye, controlling the man like a puppet, and has been moving from host to host for thousands of years. This site was where I first heard about this story, and I wish I could remember what the heck it was, and what the guy's name was. It was one word, started with "K," and wasn't a normal sounding name.

If both these sources actually ARE references to the Men of Iron, then they're actually quite different than a lot of people picture them. They're not "robots," they're computer programs. They can hack into and use pretty much any technology, and, if "K" is one, can even hack into human brains. If this is the case, the war with the Iron Men was an entirely different kind of war from anything being fought in 40k now. It was a hacking war, and humanity probably won by unleashing super computer viruses, wiping out their own technology and bombing themselves back into the stone age to prevent the Men of Iron from killing them all. This would also explain how humanity managed to win the war without destroying all life in the galaxy, what with all the super-black-hole-bombs and other ridiculously lethal super weapons they had at that point.

If someone has this issue, please please please scan and post it!

Raven911 wrote:

 fallinq wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
As formidable as Humans were supposed to be back then, I would assume they did something like a computer virus. I'm sure it had to be some sort of superweapon, to completely eradicate them.

For a short time after the Necrons were released in 2nd edition and then the blurb about the Men of Iron in the 3rd edition rulebook, I hoped that when they got their first real codex they were going to be some sort of Men of Iron remnants, long-buried and back to exterminate the humans.

That would be so much better than the current lore, IMO.

omg would it

totes, it would be, like, so, totally awesome

This was originally what they were hinting at, and originally what they were probably planning. The OLD old fluff sure seems to point in that direction. Then the big update came and they decided to go with the C'tan and all that stuff, nixing this idea. When you think about it, there are really three periods of Necron fluff, the Newcrons, Oldcrons, and OLDoldcrons. The OLDoldcrons just have such vague fluff that it doesn't directly contradict any of the newer stuff, but they were probably originally meant to be the Men of Iron at one point.

As far as the topic here, aren't there some other, more direct references to Men of Iron in canon 40k stories?

There's an old Inferno comic where marines fight against a bunch of robots. The narration makes it clear that the robots are really just puppets for one big AI that controls them all. It is strongly hinted that this is an old STC making Men of Iron, in a very similar situation to the Gaunt's Ghosts story.This solves the problem of why AI's would send other AI's to fight. They don't. The AI is the program. The robots they fight with are just metal shells the AI's control remotely. They aren't actually sentient. BTW, the robots in this story looked a little different than Necrons, and actually a little LESS human. Some of them had six limbs and other stuff.

I haven't read this one, but supposedly a character appears in one story who's this guy with a bionic eye, but he's supposedly not actually human and really ancient. And some people have taken from this story that the character actually IS the bionic eye, controlling the man like a puppet, and has been moving from host to host for thousands of years. This site was where I first heard about this story, and I wish I could remember what the heck it was, and what the guy's name was. It was one word, started with "K," and wasn't a normal sounding name.

If both these sources actually ARE references to the Men of Iron, then they're actually quite different than a lot of people picture them. They're not "robots," they're computer programs. They can hack into and use pretty much any technology, and, if "K" is one, can even hack into human brains. If this is the case, the war with the Iron Men was an entirely different kind of war from anything being fought in 40k now. It was a hacking war, and humanity probably won by unleashing super computer viruses, wiping out their own technology and bombing themselves back into the stone age to prevent the Men of Iron from killing them all. This would also explain how humanity managed to win the war without destroying all life in the galaxy, what with all the super-black-hole-bombs and other ridiculously lethal super weapons they had at that point.

If someone has this issue, please please please scan and post it!

Sadly, I don't have the whole thing, but there's a nice big page from it on this thread:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/326725.page

A google image search will give you a few more panels:

https://www.google.com/search?site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=643&q=40k+men+of+iron&oq=40k+me&gs_l=img.1.1.0l7j0i30l3.59027.60911.0.62914.6.6.0.0.0.0.138.468.5j1.6.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.6.468.0Gl55uDYho8#imgrc=_

The story in question is Ancient History by Andy Chambers and the dudes name is Kron. Kron certainly is an interesting character and I have wondered about him.

I don't believe the Men of Iron were early Necrons I think that they were made in imitation of them.

From the events of Mechanicum we know that long ago in the 40k universe the Emperor defeated the Dragon (or shard of depending on where your getting your fluff from). He was not able kill it as it was too powerful for even him to destroy. The Dragon was locked away deep on Mars and either by chance, or more likely in the Emperors case, hindsight its dreams would seep out onto the planet influencing its captors.

So the Stone Men emerge sometime during the Golden Age and build great machines and technologies and the Empire is grown, with some of the Stone Men settling on Mars. As the Dragons dreams influence the Stone Men to build more advanced machines it sets them on the path of creating the Iron Men to eventually free the Dragon from its gaol. The only way to prevent another attempt by the Dragon was to ban AI and assign someone, like Semyon the existing one in Mechanicum, to watch over it.

Those that were left on Mars and survived the Age of Strife and went on to become the Mechanicum.

Raven911 wrote:
If someone has this issue, please please please scan and post it!

I've got it, somewhere. If I don't post it in a day or two someone nudge me! (I'm assuming it's OK to post it?)

Pax Imperialis from Warhammer Monthly 36