THE DEATH OF KNOWLEDGE - Why Can't Humanity Invent in 40K? | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History

[Music] [Music] [Music] now an extremely regular talking point in people learning about the Imperium that I often see consists of either why doesn't the Imperium invent or research new technology of course the classic why doesn't the Imperium also just reverse-engineer the technology they have they should be able to do this because of blah blah blah blah blah the thing is it isn't the case that no attempts have been made to push forward technology or even for research to occur this has happened in multiple instances throughout the Imperius history usually by rogue mechanicus or covert individuals the most notable of recent times is very obviously Belisarius caught walking an extremely thin line when it comes to techno heresy this has been tolerated because of the benefits and necessity of his actions others they usually meet with untimely ends or just plain death there's definitely questions to be asked when it comes to different technologies about where or when they were implemented for example there's curious questions to do with Krieg and of course they're sort of their production method for people there and how that happens the birthing methods that we talked about recently at what point did that come in how did they have the knowledge to do that when other places do not and so on and so on so there's a lot of clouded muddy water when it comes to sort of where technology can originate from whether it's present there on different worlds at different times there's a lot of different aspects going on many struggle to understand why it is that humanity in the dark future that is the galaxy spanning Empire of the Imperium of man seems to actively work against itself to hamstring its own progression and future stability or how it can be that they are unable to really progress in terms of learning and is often said reverse engineer machines why doesn't the Imperium seem capable or willing to enacts a state sanctioned research and development programs well the reasons and origins of this traced back to the period known as the age of strife this is really the core of all of this and this was the time where the entire galaxy was cut off from interstellar travel as warp stores made traversing through warp space impossible it led to most planets in the Federation of mankind as it was at the time suffering from a complete collapse of civilized order mass rioting and in general a downward spiral that would lead to post-apocalyptic survival situations weather who remained did so by a process of survival of the fittest it's also worth remembering that prior to this humanity had suffered massive devastation during its war with his artificial creations the men of iron this is always an important contributing factor that people don't often consider around the age of strife it is not that just the age of strife happened planets were cut off and they were unable to survive a lot of humanity had already suffered incredible devastation during the war with the men of iron and then they got hit at the age of strife on top of that if you want to learn more about that in detail please see my video on the STC's the gold iron and stone men that's linked down below now the consequences of both these events would be that the pool of humans who had any advanced knowledge of Technology the end of the age of strife would be extremely limited in fact it's unknown even just how much true working knowledge mankind had retained even prior to the age of strife because mankind had during this age become heavily reliant on AI and machines as the Dark Age or the Golden Age it's a strong possibility that a large percentage if not the majority of humankind were very widely ignorant although they lived in very advanced but perhaps highly compartmentalized societies not that dissimilar to today in fact where individuals served very specific functions because of the very advanced nature of the technology people are only really capable of doing so much and so that's why you end up in these very compartmentalized roles so due to the extreme advancement of Technology when humanity reached out to colonize the galaxy machines known as STC's were created these were both vast databases of information the sum total of humanity's knowledge but also a system which could have fabricate whatever colonists needed with minimal working knowledge of whatever they required now again if you want to learn more about like I watch my ASTC video because it gets pretty complicated and it's also again very blurry and vague but the basic point here is that even prior to the Cataclysm that was the age of strife where warp storms and warp creature incursions through human proto psychos ravaged the worlds of humanity all across the galaxy humanity had already been crippled as I say in terms of its understanding of Science and Technology now to just what degree we cannot truly know but it's certainly reasonable to assume that it was already diminished and then suffered even worse deterioration that despite the age of strife some fared better than others this would often be the case if planets existed in a system when nearby worlds which provided resources were able to reach each other by sub light travel within a reasonable distance making it somewhat more feasible for them to continue maintaining their existence and again some words may have had more or less psyche as present on them and again that would also have an impact some also may not have been so heavily damaged and escaped from the war with the men of iron and we know that some even had functioning and intact STC's whether these STC's had their AI functionality just disabled or it was not a problem is relatively unknown but undoubtedly the wealth of knowledge that this provided them with gave them great power and resources to maintain and protect their society however the depressing fact of the matter is that during the Great Crusade of the Emperor and later the heresies schism of Mars some if not much of this knowledge would be lost or destroyed once again as a result of the destructive scale of the operations we know that the Imperium and the mechanicus searched far and wide for potential fragments of STC data to enable them to construct new machines or new revelations that could benefit mankind but this is only seeking out existing information it's not creating or developing new things based on research or real science and this is the primary reason why humanity in the Imperium has existed in a state of complete stagnation for the better part of 10,000 years so why is this the case why doesn't the Imperium or the mechanicus spend time researching to develop new technology why don't they reverse-engineer things and use that information to build new machines scientific discoveries weapons are the reasons for this a twofold and the first is the ideology of the mechanicus in the Imperium and secondly it's just pure ignorance so to explain this let's break down a short timeline that is led us to the modern Imperium so during the Dark Age of Technology the Golden Age of man the humans who built the first hive worlds on Mars were originally not part of any cult mechanicus mechanical or any such organization Mars before the age of strife had just been another human colony world but it was one which had gradually become as powerful as humanity's home world through its production of Technology it was also entirely separated as an individual society and had been terraformed by the advanced knowledge mankind possessed during this era in fact it was synonymous with technical expertise research and scientific advancement during the age of strife Mars like everywhere else suffered from a complete collapse of civilized order as was happening all across the galaxy but a Mars things deteriorated very quickly as was the case everywhere and the most common cause of this was initially lack of food breakdown in systems basic infrastructure and again mirroring millions of other worlds factions would form who would then compete for resources and scavenged materials Mars though had additional concerns because the atmospheric radiation shielding had been damaged and all lost the planet would then suffer from severe solar radiation which then killed or heavily damaged the DNA of large quantities of the population as well as obliterating any remaining fertile ground and flora the survivors were driven into the underground forges to escape the damaging effects of the radiation which led to high importance being placed upon the expert technicians and these would later come to be known as the tech priests of Mars as the survivors devolved into the pseudo religious worship of Technology and it's possible that due to the severe damage of the solar radiation this was initially what caused them to begin replacing their body parts with mechanical artificial alternatives and then it was this original practical necessity that would later develop into the religious belief as a cult that the worth of a single man is only the sum of his knowledge his body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect given the situation of us facing the humans trying to cling on to their very survival the origins of the cult of the machine seemed very obvious of course there was also the potential proximity to the entity known as the void dragon but how much that was involved or what it means is very much unknown and as we know the faction that would ultimately emerge victorious from this time will become known as the mechanical now later after the events of the Horus heresy it would be divided and become the cult mechanicus as a site now interestingly on Mars the mechanical had developed actually democratic parliamentary system unlike most others in the dark future we're more medieval systems had seemingly taken control of societies however the important thing for us to take away from this period is that humanity collectively had lost its most valuable commodity its collective knowledge had been absolutely obliterated it's not an exaggeration to say that many planets were thrown back into the Stone Age in terms of their actual understanding of science and other than the emperor and some of his own scientists as well as a few sparse human colonies who were themselves perhaps leftovers from the Dark Age of Technology and who yes was very civilized and seemingly had advanced technology but without the men of iron and stone were not really able to push things forward for example we know that it seems likely that during the Golden Age it was the AI creations of mankind who created other machines other advanced machines and the technical knowledge of just how to do such things could be well beyond the comprehension of even humans of the Golden Age and I've speculated before that this itself could be a contributing factor which led to the war with the man of iron and the downfall of mankind that basically humans were seen as being subsidiary and unnecessary and to a degree this is not unlike Hannah mechanicus actually view the majority of humans now regardless after the age of strife other than the aforementioned it was really only the mechanicus who held anything you might call a solid understanding of science and technology one of the most well known to emerge from the mechanicus is the complex figure of Belisarius core now he is one of the few who believes in innovation and not simply maintaining or using existing STC designs to modify and reconfigure hardware however it is worth clarifying something that I can imagine would easily become a point of confusion or contradiction in regards to call now within the Codex mechanicus it is stated that it was call who is believed to have created the starties black carapace this is the means by which a starties were able to interact via bio plugs embedded in their flesh with all types of armour however this was recently clarified further in the novel the great work which delves into the original creation process of their starties that it was other scientists notably amar or amar Astarte and Ezekiel sedin who would truly the scientists who worked with the Emperor in a sense it is also Belisarius call who was responsible and it was Sedin who was desperate to extend his life in the pursuit of knowledge merging his consciousness with kor Sedin now remains part of coal in his suppressed subconsciousness it's bit complicated and I'm getting dangerously off-topic here but anyway the point is that the mechanicus are largely speaking the only contingent of the Imperium who understand how to build and maintain advanced technology except that when we say build this is more akin to constructing a Lego kit and actually knowing intricately each process or the actual science of why something is doing whatever it is so this places us at a point where we should be asking just how much does humanity generally know in the 41st millennium in terms of science or indeed just general education this is a difficult question throughout the galaxy there are planets which are feudal basically medieval levels of society that may be governed by orbiting platforms their worlds which are pre-industrial post-industrial and even it said some 21st century levels of living although to be clear I've never really seen that expressed or described anywhere very specifically it's difficult to imagine what shape that would take it's probably a thought for expanding on another video and then we have the other Imperial world types that we've covered before you know garden fortress hive Forge and so on generally speaking though it's the norm that your general citizenry have extremely basic levels of education and again this is probably along the lines of the 19th century here so most Imperial citizens probably struggle to read or write anything complex some maybe not at all and for many their day-to-day lives are just going to be too exhausting and not really requires such things there's most certainly no centralized education system or anything like this and again this could vary from world to world however it does reach into the fairly dystopian nature of the Imperium and it has to be asked how intentional this is or if it's just not a priority for them now if you've ever read 1984 or maybe seen the movie you'll know that one of the core themes is about suppressing citizens of ability to question the state already develop any thoughts for themselves by gradually erasing people's ability to use what we would consider language so in 1984 the citizenry use what's called new speak as opposed to old speak a new speak is essentially a state sanctioned language designed to destroy the more creative emotive and free thinking old speak language it's to ensure that people are not thinking or able to voice any thoughts that would go against the state the true goal of course for the state in 1984 is to control the language and therefore control the citizenry by gradually reducing the vocabulary removing words removing verbs adjectives synonyms it dumbs down the language the end goal of this is to limit people's ability to think for themselves to erase individuality and rely completely on what the state tells them to do and think and this extract here highlights this don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought in the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten now the book also expands and gives us a vision of how the state imagines it's slow dulling of people's ability to converse to share ideas to educate and to think about really anything in an expansive or creative way their goal is the complete destruction of literature and as they forcibly change language and thought their own party propaganda will also adapt to fit people's ability to understand such things to ensure that for most common people that deterioration continues and this other extract highlights that the literature of the party will change even the slogans will change how could you have a slogan like freedom is slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished the whole climate of thought will be different in fact there will be no thought as we understand it now now I could go on and on about 1984 but I wanted to just illustrate the concept of what could occur when you have deliberately undereducated your citizenry now what does this have to do with the learning and technology within the Imperium well all the figures in 40 Cain literature are seen as speaking English if we were to literally hear the characters from 40 K their own languages they would be completely incomprehensible to us and this is an important point when it comes to again the issues surrounding technology and learning because if you cannot even understand the writing or language of those who created it or any schematics that you may discover it's going to be very very hard to clawback that ancient knowledge you see in terms of STC's while they were designed to enable humans of the time to understand how to build things and use a technology this would have all been written and recorded in what is called high gothic and that's a language not spoken by the vast majority of Imperial citizens the Imperium generally speaking has two core languages low gothic and high gothic now high gothic is a highly advanced languages regarded as being holy and it was the language spoken by the Emperor of man himself and is something akin to a mixture of Latin and French with a degree of scientific terminology thrown in now high gothic was the university accepted language of written record up until the age of strife over in the 41st millennium very few humans will be able to understand it at all it's usually only understood by high-ranking Imperial officials such as Tec priests of the mechanicus adepts of the administrative clays yaki inquisitors perhaps hive Nobles and so on basically ranking officials who would have a need to understand such things the starties would also have an understanding of this but likely this is not the case for the other military forces of the Imperium we're more concerned with actual military operation save for perhaps again sisters a battle and the ecclesia are key because they have a need to learn such things for their religious purposes for most more standard military operators it would more likely just bring along with them an Inquisitor and a tech priest the more common language spoken throughout the Imperium is low gothic now this is a vastly more simplified and highly bastardized version of high gothic unsurprisingly this varies from system to system so even within the Imperium because there's no centralized kind of ordering the Imperium there's no truly universal version of low gothic so some may have difficulty from region to region understanding such things elements of it will largely be understood but specifics lost in translation will also usually have localized languages that have developed over millennia originating out of the Age of strife now the reason why all this stuff about language is important is because similarly to 1984 once a language there's degraded as it has in low gothic to a certain degree while in the Imperium there is no obvious evidence that this degradation was a deliberate process quite the opposite in fact in fact has been largely the same 1984 the goal of the state is to dumb down people's ability to convert by reducing vocabulary they're unable to express and comprehend certain concepts now this is basically the situation within the Imperium although not to such a severe degree it has not helped at all by most Imperial citizens not having any kind of formal education their general understanding of almost anything we would consider to be science is just non-existent they likely only receive concepts about the world they live in via state propaganda and religious worship via the ecclesia key so being preached to essentially much like medieval earth where the church was the main method by which concepts about how a world worked would have been dictated so if someone who spoke high gothic wanted to explain to us on in the lower dialect how something like genetics or powering starship engines was achieved it's not just a case of having to translate it in fact you probably couldn't translate it and this is the problem because the corresponding words would not exist within the lower dialect you can't translate something clearly if the words do not even exist there to be able to properly explain it and this isn't only made worse by the complete lack of education meaning if you are somehow able to get people to understand those words that you were translating for them it would still be meaningless and this is a really major problem in terms of expecting ordinary citizens to somehow be able to do anything that you would think of as research and so on I mean it's not impossible that on some world somewhere maybe there's a hive Noble whatever who's really Heidi into researching old tech but Nobles are usually more concerned with things like murdering their own family members and ensuring that they maintain their comfortable lives however you could envisage something akin to say a Victor Frankenstein like figure in a hive city I guess that's possible but for most citizens of the Imperium their understanding of how to build and make things in technology would be like asking a child to build some very advanced piece of tech from scratch they wouldn't even know how to find the basic materials forget about the processes required the assembly the advanced coding specific scientific processes required to activate and run it on top of that how to power it so in terms of your citizenry it's just a non-starter in all respects [Music] so the mechanicus are the guardians of humanity's knowledge but why don't they innovate and push things forward well again this comes back to the age of strife during the age of strife the technicians of Mars transition from being engineers to being these priests Tech priests they were part of this cult which developed as a result of the cataclysmic civil war taking place around instead of seeking to understand technology but to worship it now it's true of course to say that the adapters mechanicus strive to gather new technology they quest for it if you will however that quest for knowledge and technology probably does not take the form that you might imagine it would the mechanicus do not seek knowledge through research or reverse engineering and so on they seek it through standard template constructs or fragments of such again the simple concept of an STC is that is a system which contains all of humanity's knowledge except that when this system was originally utilized the colonists did not really require the kind of text that is used now what the mechanic has searched for are hard copies of data from the STC systems because most actual STC systems as they were originally used are corrupted beyond use or just outright destroyed so the hard copy templates are all that remain and the importance of SDC's cannot be understated in fact STC's are so valued at even xenos like the elder will seek out human STC just as much as humanity because of how advanced human civilization was during the gold age so gathering knowledge is good it gives more information and more potential for developing new tech so the trouble comes instead than the fact that the mechanicus the cult of the Machine view knowledge as the supreme manifestation of divinity or creatures and artifacts that embody knowledge are holy so for the mechanicus the Emperor himself is this supreme object of their worship as they view him as being what they refer to as the Omni sire and this is because of his seemingly limitless knowledge of technology and his ability to apparently fix things just by a touch and that points perhaps to again what we know from the advanced systems of the Golden Age and they may well have had systems that operated with some degree of bio integration that is way beyond our comprehension the emperor is someone who passed through the Golden Age certainly could have had access or party to this advanced technology although the question always arises why didn't the emperor do more to say god the technology of the Golden Age why didn't he create some votes somewhere with functioning STC's etc these are the obvious questions that have no answers was he unable to see what was coming did he feel that that was not the right way to go nobody knows so as a result of these beliefs the mechanicus view a human only by the sum of their knowledge and this is the core thing to understand about the mechanicus to them knowledge is all the body is merely on organic machine that supports and contains that knowledge this is why the mechanicus have no issues whatsoever in extreme body modifications designed to extend their lives into the millennia because doing so prevents that loss of holy knowledge and this is the most important thing some mechanicus will even involve themselves in merging of their minds to again extend life is reminiscent of the themes and ideas from something like ghost in the shell' these ideas about consciousness and individuals merging to become something greater housed within artificial bodies with life potentially extending to a limitless degree this is one of the reasons why servitors are a thing mechanicus just have no qualms or emotions or concerns at all about modifying and using humans as machine tools because they do not have any respect for human individuality if you have no knowledge or you're not seeking some higher purpose or function then you are simply an organic machine and nothing more and you can be adapted and carved up for use just like any other machine it's actually pretty disturbing and terrifying and again this might be a detail about the mechanicus that i think is often lost and this isn't to say just for clarity that the mechanicus go around just murdering people at random but they certainly view humans with complete emotionless apathy and they certainly wouldn't blink an eye using some pleb Imperial citizen if it was required to achieve some process in their unending quest for knowledge then when it comes to STC fragments or the rarity of intact STC patterns mechanicus view these as reflections of the will and the divinity of the machine God they consider STC designs as being the purest form of knowledge and as such they absolutely must not be distorted at a base level and this includes things like reverse engineering even if they were capable of doing such a thing which they generally are not able to do now again as always things do get a little muddy here because most mechanicus would consider any changes to any STC design as now heresy it's an unthinkable concept for them to consider changing a holy design of the machine God research of such things in and of itself is seen as extremely suspect and actively discouraged and this is because they also believe that all knowledge already exists out in the galaxy it's not necessary to engage in research because the information is out there already waiting to be found then you also have what is referred to as black Tech this is knowledge which is deemed to either be too advanced or too dangerous to be used in any way you know most likely be judged by high-ranking mechanicus and then archive a good example of this would be something like ai ai is deemed far too dangerous to be used in any fashion or at least that's the official line in reality a lot of things in the Imperium still use AI but it's a very much more basic AI that still requires human input or in the case of something like the mechanicus is CASL and robots they use a variety of wetware you then have the case also of titans and having a human pilot the princeps to connect with and operate with the Titans machines spirit if you will black tech may also be stuff like Zenith technology that runs counter to imperial thinking or again it's just considered to be unknown and way too dangerous so anyone found to be engaging in exploratory research or even suggesting usage of black technology would likely be sentenced to immediate execution for dangerous thinking the mechanicus and the Imperium are generally fearful of highly advanced technology or even weapons which are more powerful than they have now and this might seem counterintuitive but we know that such powerful weapons do exist from encounters with various AI from the Dark Age who have already exhibited weapons of terrifying devastation that can just punch through void shields use extreme forms of energy generation to form miniature black holes that will overlay matter essentially on top of itself in the same space in time creating cataclysmic levels of destruction we also know that AI from the Dark Age seemed to have somehow been able to even travel through time so it's all pretty heavy stuff and it's tech the humanity even as it stands now knows was a very huge contributing factor to the near annihilation of mankind and very heavily contributed to the severity of the Age of strife now some especially in the Inquisition are probably also aware there's also the very real potential for AI to be corrupted or they're thinking to be perverted by the warp and and this is another very dangerous risk so fear alone of exploring the unknown is a very real thing for the mechanicus and the Imperium now on top of this the Imperium as it stands generally has the approach as I recently discussed of treating its problems with the elegant technique of blunt trauma why use big potentially dangerous advanced tech when you could just throw an extra million people at your problem manpower and citizens are the Imperium is greatest and most easily sourced resource and solution to all their problems so when we come to the subject of scientific or technological research either for new things or for reverse engineering they have absolutely no desire or apparent need to do so from the perspective of the Imperium experimentation scientific development is just seen as unnecessary and has almost been fully replaced by widespread ignorance indoctrinated faith the need to understand in a deep sense or at a base level how or why things work is just not seen as being necessary although I often think that this is probably a little exaggerated in the law because especially for the mechanicus the entire origin of the Machine cult was around them having an existing base level of tech because otherwise the repairs that they needed to do couldn't have been made and it's often said that the operation of machines is the will of the machine God this is why incense is a solid cure for any tech problem in 40k but more seriously while text may have given the knowledge to make repairs and that could certainly include what we considered to be scientific understanding this doesn't mean necessarily they would give you the knowledge to then construct a new version of that thing and this is why if you had a piece of tech for which a template has then subsequently been lost or for which you had no template to begin with if it was maybe some kind of relic is damaged beyond repair or just outright destroyed then that technology is permanently lost and this has unfortunately been a continuing thing in the Imperium and for the mechanicus things are destroyed the pattern is lost or just misplaced in the vast libraries of the bureaucracy and then they just can't find it again they can't make it again and it's gone now to try and give us a simple analogy let's take something like a car okay an average pleb person is going to struggle to do anything with their car even change a wheel unbelievably but a competent person akin to say you know a guardsman in this analogy you could change a battery a wheel you can maintain it to a degree but little more than that now a car mechanic will be akin to something like a tech priests they can perform repairs they can trace problems they can fix components if you said to them hey build that from scratch including all the schematics the designs the measurements every process to complete a completely perfect functioning version of it a replica that would be very unlikely now please spare me any mechanics out there who are reading to tell me how they could easily do it and blah blah blah like even if you in theory felt you had the understanding to do so you likely wouldn't be able to replicate it to the quality of the finished manufactured product because again manufacturing requires complex machines in and of itself so there's a whole range of other process which have to happen it's not just putting the stuff together or knowing the shape or the design or all these different colors there's a huge amount of Technology and cumulative science which goes into making something that complex and you can just scale that up in terms of technology for the imperium manufacturing is no simple thing it is very complex anyway it's just a simple analogy that I'm trying to use to illustrate the point that the mechanicus do have an understanding of how things work and how to repair them and they probably have a basic understanding of some of the science but only to that basic degree relatively speaking it's known of course that some of the highest tech priests like Lord Belisarius Corps have much more advanced knowledge and likely do have greater understanding of tech in general but this is why the entire structure the mechanicus exists for as much as they seek and desire to uncover new tech it also is there to guard that knowledge because they understand the danger of letting too much knowledge out there and this is where the comparisons with 1984 coming because the mechanicus are likely suppressing the advancement of knowledge for both philosophical ideological and religious reasons but also because they understand the inherent danger in allowing technology to spread throughout the Imperium they fear it being stolen misused corrupted and potentially causing another disaster that would doom humanity they're basically holding the reins very tight so the way in which the mechanicus operates is very much a part of mankind's technological stagnation as much as the actual loss of knowledge itself and it's true that some Forge worlds will excel in producing certain Imperial munitions or Hardware because central control of almost anything in the Imperial is just impossible and so small variations in machines and so on will occur and whilst it's true that all worlds with a mechanicus adhere faithfully to the cult of the machine their interpretations of specifically what that actually means may have some leeway and this then leads to small variations in the technology taking place and when we say that what we're talking about is things that could be as small as just the power in a weapon being configured slightly differently or say a tank having a different weapon mounted we're not talking about huge revisions to the schematic set this is tolerated because the original design is not seen as being really altered it's more that existing knowledge is being combined but it's still preferential if it's somewhere printed on a schematic so they can say okay you know this is something which exists it can often be a fairly loose interpretation and it's tolerated by the mechanicus it is what it is and this is often why Imperial Tech is referred to as having a pattern a good example of this is the fourth world of riser riser is one of the best forge worlds at producing plasma weapons and these specialist worlds likely come from just experience in production accidents and mistakes in the production process which turned out to be positive happy mistakes basically it's probably coming from an observation of just what works better by chance than a true understanding of trying to make something work better however these variations can also be one example of where research does take place but again it's not research in the same sense that we might consider it to be research if you imagine say a blueprint for a tank on that blueprint it has various options for different weapon mountings and how you would build that accept but on the original STC most of these extra details were damaged or corrupted and only partially readable so what you might find is that edits may spend years cross-referencing these details and trying to piece together a whole picture of what was on the original template scouring through libraries of information trying to sort of build a picture and if they feel they have successfully researched and uncovered a new configuration this would be submitted to the mechanicus Lords who would then make the final decision on if this variation would be approved or not and if approved this new pattern could be rolled out and distributed to forge worlds throughout the Imperium so for example a riser pattern vehicle does not necessarily mean it was built on riser it just means that riser is where the pattern originated from now another thing to consider as I mentioned earlier the mechanicus similarly to humanity in general is highly compartmentalized and this means that most citizens will serve a singular role and that is all they will do for their lives within the mechanicus for most this is a similar process that we born to carry out a specific task and they must strictly carry out that task fairly to do so would leave you being viewed essentially as a failed component and you're going to be replaced and you can read into what they mean by replaced life for most on a forge world is essentially to be a human drone if you were going to rise to the ranks of becoming a tech priest so whenever we begin to explore the lack of innovation in technology within the Imperium you run up against the vast ignorance and fear of the general population and that's stacked against the questionable goals of the mechanicus it's important to remember as well the mechanicus are really still a separate thing from the Imperium in many ways although they do sort of operate under its umbrella the original Alliance forged between the Emperor and the mechanic ham was a marriage of convenience and it largely still is they didn't have a huge desire to come back to the Imperium because again this goes way back to the origins of terror and Mars as being kind of separate entities really and because of this separation this is one of the reasons why the mechanicus probably hoards a lot of information for itself and doesn't put it out to the Imperium if new tech is discovered there's no guarantees that this would automatically be distributed to forge worlds all across the galaxy this could be deemed as being too dangerous in air quotes and instead get archived in the mechanicus vaults for later reference and the true intentions of the mechanicus leadership keeping potentially advanced tech for itself could easily be speculated on one being that the mechanicus much like the navigators are essential to the running of the Imperium without them things would grind to a halt very quickly and they probably want to keep things that way or it could be more genuinely protective regardless though whatever they decide to do with the tech they know that it would largely be unable to be understood or subsequently fabricated either way so whatever they choose to do with it is largely their own Parag still the Imperium is a big place and as we've seen in the past in current times there were those within the mechanicus who do not sit within the accepted views of the cult now Belisarius call being the most notable and this is largely down to cause perception of things being very much that of the ancient days of the early Imperium and this is partly his own view but it's very probably exacerbated by his mental merging with sadame the result being that coal sees no problem with genuine scientific research and new innovations like the core inferior the call inferior is essentially a replicated version of himself to enable Lord Gilman to engage with him were he to be not present in urgent times or worse where he did die the goal of course is to preserve knowledge however the Lord primark already suspects that Cole's creation is in actuality a strange form of self-aware sentient AI albeit not anything resembling other AI we've seen before but a far more strange mix of machine and organic if the Emperor were ever to return to the Imperium it's likely things would change in very short order the emergence of the Imperium brought with it entirely new designs but often these were still based on ancient archaea tack in fact even with the presence of the Emperor on every piece of tech from the Dark Age was able to be replicated the Imperial forests fortress monastery the Phalanx being one such example of tech which originated from the Dark Age before the Imperium and was then unable to be replicated however even early tech developed or at least fabricated by the Emperor during the first days of the Imperium were unable to later be reproduced by the mechanicus and much of this has to do with schematic slightly being lost during the heresy the division of the mechanic come into the Loyalists mechanicus and dark mechanic ham and so this loss of technology is occurring as an ongoing process even if it was developed in the last 10,000 years as part of the Imperium but on the other hand there is more forward progress for the Imperium in the past centuries than there has been in the previous ten of millennia and some of that is out of necessity but with the likes of Belisarius called pushing things forward who knows what they will develop or rediscover such innovation though only comes from individuals who have vast accumulations of knowledge in broader terms the impairment humanity as a whole is just not set up to achieve any forward technological advancement it lacks the means to communicate and pass on knowledge it lacks basic understandings of science and it fears even attempting to do so the only ones capable of achieving forward progress are the mechanicus and they fear blind advancement as much as your average Imperial citizen although likely for entirely different reasons and this is not to mention the fact that beyond the basic workhorse tools of tanks and weapons used in the Imperium advanced tech will either not exist in the form of STC hard copies or just completely beyond the comprehension of even the mechanicus but most critical though is in understanding why the knowledge of mankind has been so heavily curtailed and this lies in the fact that the mechanicus wield immense power and even arrogance in their belief of their own mission their own goals and objectives mechanicus can often be given even more odd respect than Imperial officials because of the weight of importance that they carry and this is entirely down to the understanding of all that just like the navigators they are absolutely essential for the continued existence of humanity they protect mankind from itself in the dangers its ability to develop technology represents they seek the dawn of an age where man and machine are a meshed they seek to crush any opponents who oppose their ideals or dare to enact unsanctioned research and experimentation or worse creative discovery the guardians of knowledge within the cult mechanicus will go to any lengths to defend any threat to their supreme monopoly on technology they would murder anyone who is a threat or who infringes upon that beliefs and they would without hesitation silence those within the Imperium who would speak out against them through either literal or societal sabotage possibly even lobotomizing those who committed the worst infractions before disappearing them to some irrelevant backwater to live out their days as a vegetable like Drome there's a specific and distinct reason as to why research and innovation does not occur widely within the Imperium and that reason is simply that the mechanicus says that this is the way things are they would do anything to prevent it being otherwise they seek the ultimate preservation of holy knowledge they wield their own me separate entirely from the Imperium of man they control the world ending Titans and they wouldn't hesitate to use those to protect their vast vaults of knowledge not to mention who knows what mysteries or dangerous pieces of our key attack they have uncovered over millennia the mechanicus would simply not allow any to challenge them even if that were to mean outright war the only one who could truly turn the tide of humanity's miserable stagnation is of course the Omni sire [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Luetin09

Views: 1,105,484

Keywords: Gaming, Discuss, Channel, Future, 40K, Warhammer 40K, Imperium, Humanity, Mankind, Fall, Space Marines, Heretic, Heresy, The Emperor of Man, Lore, History, Guide, Warhammer 40000, Warp, Immaterium, Rift, War, Horror, Nightmare, Tabletop, Inquisition, Mechanicus, Mechanicum, Golden Age, Invent, Belisarius Cawl

Id: joXYA_4T58g

Length: 42min 0sec (2520 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/McCraft2]

Saw this earlier today, it's a great discussion that I'm going to point 40k armchair theorizers to in the future.

The thing I love about this setting is that it's functionally grimdark - the Imperium of Man isn't a horrible place to live because everyone's too lazy to improve or just cause it can be, it's a terrible place to live because everyone's just trying to survive. When you think about the practical considerations of running a million-planet empire in a galaxy full of Orks, Tyranids, Necrons, and literal manifestations of Chaos, it's a miracle that it's held together so well at all.

Part of what I enjoy about AdMech in particular is how they honestly feel like they're trying to do their best with the situation they find themselves in. They're sorting through the ash heaps of the bygone eras of the DAoT and the Great Crusade, in an attempt to recover fragments of what humanity could be again. Coincidentally, I love Stygies VIII, since out of all the Forge Worlds they're at likely at the forefront of innovation and exploration, even if it'll likely come back to bite them sooner or later.

If anyone wants to read more, the "Why Everything is so Grimdark" section of this 1d4chan article is fantastic. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it!

[u/Ur_Glog]

laughs in Cawl