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I'm writing a story right now.
The premise is that due to a bureaucratic error, the Imperium lost a sector for 5,000 years. Due to sheer dumb luck and a civil war that wiped out the majority of hardline Mechanicus on the sector's sole forge world, the sector significantly advanced in that time period (to the point where they're beginning to phase out soldiers with remote-controlled robots, have fully automated society, absurdly fast elevators, ect...), is the basic premise reasonably plausible?

Second part. Is a sector-sized empire (3 systems or so) being able to muster a fleet of 200 or so (small, 2km for the largest battleships due to efficient tech and automation) starships be plausible? I'm not too knowledgable about fleet sizes, but judging by the scale fails of 40k (Battles for entire planets involving less people than WW2 battles), I don't believe it's too big a stretch. Feel free to prove me wrong, however.

Additional Information-
Sector is made up of 3 systems, 15 worlds. 10 of those are inhabited to some extent. 4 have populations of 10 billion plus. 4 of the uninhabited ones are gas giants, and the last one is a pure mining world/testing ground.
170 or so moons in the sector, most are small asteroids around gas giants, although some are inhabited.
Several million asteroids, comets, miscellaneous "Oort Cloud Objects", as well.
Only one of these planets was a small forge world before the sector got lost. It is now the primary manufacturing center, but some moons and all planets have some industrial capacity. There are refueling centers/atmospheric mines on every gas giant.

ADDENDUM - Retcon List (changes to OP in purple)
• Bump the no contact period up to 5k or so years.
• Insert a civil war on the sector's sole forge world.
• Bump the fleet down to 200 ships tops, with 15 or so capital ships and a swarm of smaller ones.

I apologize for the massive ship spam, I appear to have severely underestimated the resource costs of building starships.
I'll do the necessary retcons on the 3 chapters I've already posted when I have the time. Thank you for your help, and feel free to continue suggesting changes.

With only 3 star systems, where are they getting the raw materials to build all that stuff?

Even with a tolerent Mech cult that many robots seem unlikely.

Plausible=yes, though you may have to cut back on the military might, being all isolated and stuff.

Listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7WQX2LOJNk

 Psienesis wrote:
With only 3 star systems, where are they getting the raw materials to build all that stuff?

Moons around gas giants used solely for mining and weapons testing, smaller mines on pretty much every planet, harvesting hydrogen/helium from gas giants using fast ships with giant scoops, and a little bit of experimental matter recombination.

pm713 wrote:
Even with a tolerent Mech cult that many robots seem unlikely.

Right now, their most advanced bot is only semi-autonomous, with a override usable by humans. I wrote it so the Mech cult started out as tolerant, and got more and more open-minded over time due to seeing innovation as the greatest form of worship.

 Big Mac wrote:
Plausible=yes, though you may have to cut back on the military might, being all isolated and stuff.

Listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7WQX2LOJNk

Thank you. Obviously, as soon as the Imperium notices them, the whole situation will resemble a beetle against a descending boot. The Imperium will be able to zerg rush them.
On Earh right now, about five million people are serving in the military. Multipying by fifteen (the amount of worlds they control (the amount of heavily-populated worlds and sparsely-populated world basically cancels out)), the sector would have a military strength of 75,000,000 or so in peacetime, plus robots. Of course, being 40k, in wartime that number would swell to several billion due to drafting.

But they lack Exterminatus-grade weapons, so... they lose.

 Psienesis wrote:
But they lack Exterminatus-grade weapons, so... they lose.

Well, obviously. The outcome was never in doubt. They will be crushed by the Imperium at the end, but put up a hell of a fight.

 Verviedi wrote:

The premise is that due to a bureaucratic error, the Imperium lost a sector for 500 years.

This isn't unlikely at all. There are many examples of similar events in the fluff ( even the recent fluff)

Due to sheer dumb luck and a tolerant cult of the Mechanicus, the sector significantly advanced in that time period

Not likely at all if it happened recently, most lost splinters of the current IoM regress or preserve tech at best. But there are examples of humans who parted ways with Terra long before the insanity really started and did not suffer from the same curse at the IoM.

Here is a start point for research into this.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Diasporex
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Category:Human_Civilizations

(to the point where they're beginning to phase out soldiers with remote-controlled robots, have fully automated society, absurdly fast elevators, ect...)

The current cult of mars will not be open minded to any form of true A.I at all. This is one of the highest forms of herecy.
Remote-controlled soldiers -> Welcome to Skitarrii etc.

You might want to read more on Martian robots.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Legio_Cybernetica

Second part. Is a sector-sized empire (3 systems or so) being able to muster a fleet of thousands of (small, 2km for the largest battleships due to efficient tech and automation) starships be plausible?

The current IoM will probably not be able build a fleet numbering in the thousands of warp capable light cruiser like ships with limited resources like yours.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:
But they lack Exterminatus-grade weapons, so... they lose.

Why would they not posses or be able to fabricate those weapons. Virus bombing planets seems to be the least difficult things to do in OP's unusual plan.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Verviedi wrote:

Right now, their most advanced bot is only semi-autonomous, with a override usable by humans. I wrote it so the Mech cult started out as tolerant, and got more and more open-minded over time due to seeing innovation as the greatest form of worship.

There is a name for these brave innovators: Hereteks
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Heretek

Seems fine though I'm not sure about the naval battles. 40K tends to have naval battles consist of dozens or hundreds of ships at most from what I've read.

You should probably have the sector lost for longer than 500 years though. Not much changes in 40K over such a small period of time.

So in 500 years the leaders of the Mechanicus all died out? They have the potential to live for hundreds of years, at that point you would be better off saying that they got in a internecine war and killed each other off leaving only the neophytes to start over.

Why would they not posses or be able to fabricate those weapons. Virus bombing planets seems to be the least difficult things to do in OP's unusual plan.

No need to develop such weapons. They exist in a "fishbowl". That is, a confined region where all they have is what is around them. They've only got 3 star systems, and that's all they're ever going to have. Every world in every one of those systems is precious, and cannot be lost.

The real issue is, again, resources. While asteroid mining can be a thing, certainly, there's a finite number of asteroids for obtaining enough adamantium to create a kilometer-long battleship. Gas giants don't have adamantium (it's a metal, not a gas, after all), and with only 3 star systems, there's finite room for Forge Worlds and mining colonies when you have to feed the populace of these worlds who, thanks to advances in medical science and quality of life, are living longer, dying less frequently and having more children (because when you don't have to work, what else are you going to do?).

If you're mining your systems for fleets of thousands of such ships, you're either living in some sort of Mechanicus utopia or you haven't thought the layout of the systems through sufficiently. The Imperium, in general, is noted for leaving entire worlds barren and lifeless after mining it for every scrap of material they can get to build their war machines. All the efficiency in the galaxy isn't going to stop that unless you somehow have learned how to create matter out of nothing.

 Psienesis wrote:

Why would they not posses or be able to fabricate those weapons. Virus bombing planets seems to be the least difficult things to do in OP's unusual plan.

No need to develop such weapons. They exist in a "fishbowl". That is, a confined region where all they have is what is around them. They've only got 3 star systems, and that's all they're ever going to have. Every world in every one of those systems is precious, and cannot be lost.

The real issue is, again, resources. While asteroid mining can be a thing, certainly, there's a finite number of asteroids for obtaining enough adamantium to create a kilometer-long battleship. Gas giants don't have adamantium (it's a metal, not a gas, after all), and with only 3 star systems, there's finite room for Forge Worlds and mining colonies when you have to feed the populace of these worlds who, thanks to advances in medical science and quality of life, are living longer, dying less frequently and having more children (because when you don't have to work, what else are you going to do?).

If you're mining your systems for fleets of thousands of such ships, you're either living in some sort of Mechanicus utopia or you haven't thought the layout of the systems through sufficiently. The Imperium, in general, is noted for leaving entire worlds barren and lifeless after mining it for every scrap of material they can get to build their war machines. All the efficiency in the galaxy isn't going to stop that unless you somehow have learned how to create matter out of nothing.

Gonna have to agree with this. Aside from the fact that 500 years is too short to develop hereteks of that caliber, it also takes a bloody long time to assemble a craft with correct materials as well as mine them. Realistically, your going to have to come up with a much longer time of no contact as well as a better excuse for material wealth. Reasonable logistics are good for selling it. Hundreds sell it off much better.

Take me for example. I have fluff for a bunch of renegade marines. The only way I justify them as being able to refit themselves without having to steal everything they can get their hands on is by putting them way out in the ghoul stars in a colossal asteroid belt orbiting a pair of binary stars with a DAoT era manufactorum.

40K tends to have naval battles consist of dozens or hundreds of ships at most from what I've read.

Depends. Horus Heresy battles with Legion fleets are that big.

In 'modern' 40k, you'd see similar battles at the Cadian Gate, or near the eastern fringe against a Hive Fleet. Not in and around a single sector.

The Gothic War - a big naval war focused around a single sector - had about fifty to sixty capital ships per side in the entire war, and the Gothic Sector is a much bigger one than you describe - about half a dozen sub-sectors with about half a dozen worlds each.

The normal 'rule-of-thumb' from assorted books and novels seems to be that the Imperium maintains approximately one major capital ship per world (plus assorted destroyers, frigates, troopships and so on).

As noted, without forge-world level orbital docks, producing lots of big warships would be hard. Building smaller things (raiders, destroyers, etc en masse is much more doable), especially if a fair proportion are defence monitors (essentially a destroyer without a warp engine - so the mass and power requirements are used for extra shields and energy weapons instead).

So judging by this I should-

• Bump the no contact period up to 2K or so years.
• Insert a civil war on the sector's sole forge world.
• Bump the fleet down to 200 ships tops, with 15 or so capital ships and a swarm of smaller ones.

I apologize for the massive ship spam, I appear to have severely underestimated the resource costs of building starships.
I'll do the necessary retcons on the 3 chapters I've already posted when I have the time. Thank you.

If you are in such a small isolated pocket, why would you have all of that military infastructure at all?

If you are saying they are actually totally isolated they would have no reason to have thousands of warships.

If they are not isolated then their thousands of warships would have been noticed long ago.

Depends. Fifteen fairly major worlds (or equivalent*) could - if heavily industrialised - produce a force of a couple of hundred (small!) destroyers and a few cruisers.

Why they want them is a fair question, but a sector would have had a sector fleet assigned - If the sector got 'forgotten' accidentally, then sooner or later a ship or two would have been sent to the nearest other sector or segmentum command go "Oi!" and find out why they'd not heard from the Imperium at large for a few decades.

If they didn't have a fleet (it was withdrawn for some reason, or it never had one assigned**), then it still might want a fleet for its own internal security. A tightly knit region of space is held together by internal trade - if the government is less than totally loved, open and democratic, basing itself off any of the individual worlds and having the only warships in the region makes internal political enforcement very easy.

Losing an Inter-Sector World (a single world which isn't part of a sector and which just gets 'visited' every few decades or even centuries to check it's still there and pick up the tithe is easy to lose.



* Just as a note - getting fifteen 'mainworlds' in just three star systems is unusual and very impressive. It's relatively rare in the Imperium that there's more than a couple of multi-billion-people worlds in a star system - one is normal, two is not unheard of, three is fairly rare. Obviously there are no shortage of small (couple of million or so) worlds which are penal colonies, mining worlds, mechanicum research outposts, etc, etc.

** Example scenario - a Rogue Trader founded a series of colonies. Said colonies are technically not imperial space, despite being the size and substance of a small sector. Of course, as the Rogue Trader's outworld holdings grow, he becomes obliged to formally declare them to the Imperium and turn them over to the Adeptus Terra to govern formally. But it's possible that either he didn't, or he set out to do so but his ship was lost en route back to whatever he considered 'home space'.

 Verviedi wrote:
So judging by this I should-

• Bump the no contact period up to 2K or so years.
• Insert a civil war on the sector's sole forge world.
• Bump the fleet down to 200 ships tops, with 15 or so capital ships and a swarm of smaller ones.

I apologize for the massive ship spam, I appear to have severely underestimated the resource costs of building starships.
I'll do the necessary retcons on the 3 chapters I've already posted when I have the time. Thank you.

No you should bump the splitting off period back to way back before the herecy.
The cult or mars and the IoM will not produce your spiffy bright sify tech based on scientific progress.
They will make cannibalistic grimdark technology based on dogma, traditions and the believe in the machine god. Even the most freethinking heretik will found his future inventions on know knowledge resulting in a slow evolution of more forbidden grim dark tech and obscure arcane rituals.
Sure you could kill off all tech by some apocalyptic event and start civilisation over again from the stone age, but going from stone age tech on one planet to exploiting 3 star systems can not be done in 2k years if our current cultural progression is anything to go by.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The one alternative I to do it in 2k would be to kill off all tech and have some alien species or warp entity interfere with it all, to speed things up and keep them from rediscovering IoM tech artefacts.

 Verviedi wrote:
]Due to sheer dumb luck and a tolerant cult of the Mechanicus, the sector significantly advanced in that time period (to the point where they're beginning to phase out soldiers with remote-controlled robots, have fully automated society, absurdly fast elevators, ect...), is the basic premise reasonably plausible?

A fully automated society is possible in 500 years, using servitors. Consider- if the robots are remote controlled they are not automated.
What the mechanicus would likely have done is start with mass monotask servitor production, progress to castellan style robots and then advanced models, within about 300 years.
Lets say your space mines need servitors and the Mechanicus collaborated with the local governors to begin a mass eugenics program. The 'warrior' humans were drafted into breeding stock for battle servitors/skitarri/ officers etc and the smartest citizens remained citizens. The dross got quietly servitor'd over a few decades- producing a society of model citizens.
In return, the Mechanicus produces advanced domestic servitors to make work simple for the populace.

Over the next century this produces your 'Sci fi Utopia' within the Imperium as the servitors take over the bulk of menial labour. Seminary/Academies are formed to induct more and more techpriests to handle the blessing and running of so much machinery. As menial labour becomes unnecessary, so do menial labourers.

Lurking behind every pleasant chrome plated robot facade, there is the brain matter of a person who did not make the grade.
Your utopia would then be built on the graves of the poorest citizens, and would fit into 40k quite nicely.

Second part. Is a sector-sized empire (3 systems or so) being able to muster a fleet of thousands of (small, 2km for the largest battleships due to efficient tech and automation) starships be plausible? I'm not too knowledgable about fleet sizes, but judging by the scale fails of 40k (Battles for entire planets involving less people than WW2 battles), I don't believe it's too big a stretch. Feel free to prove me wrong, however.

As others have noted above, this seems unlikely. You'd have to justify the ships- are they in fact the mining fleets which pulled more and more raw materials from the asteroid belts, hastily refitted with laser batteries when xenos attacked?

I'd be wondering how the tech advanced with the people knowledgeable all dead instead of degenerating into savagery?

If we're looking at our tech for comparison, the tech spikes and flat lines at a plateau, either due to limited resource or inability to solve a problem. 500 years is a bit short, 5k looks promising but might still be short, especially in 40k lore where wealthy citizens can live well over couple decades with juv treatment.

Limited trading or contact severely hinder it's tech and military might. Then there is chaos daemons we haven't even touched.

 ChazSexington wrote:
I'd be wondering how the tech advanced with the people knowledgeable all dead instead of degenerating into savagery?

Over the past period of 5,000 years, humanity has advanced from small temples and bronze tools to laser eye surgery and supercomputers. This advancement would have been even more dramatic if we had precursor tech to study at the start. Not every Mechanicus member died, just all of the high-level Magos. The low-level ones only suffered large casualties and were forced to embrace innovation.

 Verviedi wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
I'd be wondering how the tech advanced with the people knowledgeable all dead instead of degenerating into savagery?

Over the past period of 5,000 years, humanity has advanced from small temples and bronze tools to laser eye surgery and supercomputers. This advancement would have been even more dramatic if we had precursor tech to study at the start. Not every Mechanicus member died, just all of the high-level Magos. The low-level ones only suffered large casualties and were forced to embrace innovation.

Plus there's the fact that the Imperium already has robots and servitors and super elevators- they're just not as universal as they tend to be in the Jetsons.
What we are really talking about is a cultural shift- extending the lifestyle of the upper hive lords to the populace over time.

To put it simply you can't start with this,



murder half the population, let all the heretiks live, leave them to pick up the pieces and expect this to happen in the grim dark 40k setting without any help from the outside.



The remains your survivors will find will not be the scientific books on Math, engineering, thermodynamics etc. of today. No they will be half burned scraps of holy scrolls originally containing sacred rituals on how to make a men into a techthralls and what blessedd rituals you need to preform to build a plasma reactor out of specific holy parts without giving any understanding on what plasma even is.

Sure you can build a cool shiny bright 40k army there is noting wrong with that. We will most likely all enjoy your amry. But your current background story is just as likely as the lv 1 dnd player who claims to be a veteran dragon slayer and have good contacts with the king of the realm.

Acknowledged. No army based on this fluff is planned. I already have my schedule full enough working with my Tau and AdMech without having to worry about heavily converted forlorn hopes.

Or alternatively, in the Grim Darkness of the far future, we need some light to cast us a bit of shadow. Put everything into perspective and whatnot.

That would be the Farsight Enclaves. Or if you want to go slightly darker, the Tau Empire.

Your cluster of worlds could have gotten tau support...

My solution will likely be putting them back to the Great Crusade, and have them fight the Imperial Army and Legions. In the 3 draft chapters I already wrote, they were in the Segmentum Obscurus, on the other side of the galaxy from the Tau. It is a good idea, though.

I have an simmiliar story as yours, but I built it on ill-fated Garon Nebula crusade, as an abbandoned naval base.
As they were abbandoned, they developed into formidable mini-imperium and they also posses quite a number of spaceships left over by the crusades as they hastily retreated. Some damaged, some not. They also commited some tech-heresy as renovating and upgrading the ships with new weapons, equipping it with auto-loaders and such... Guard and PDF were also re-equipped with new, better equipment or vehicles...
(My PM blog would tell you more)

Feel free to be inspired.

Question: are these 2K long ships capable of Warp travel? If they are, then what has stopped them from being in contact with the larger universe? If they are not Warp-capable, how are the systems staying in touch with one another?