40k Lore: The Dark Age of Technology

One of the most mysterious chapters in the history of the 40k universe is the so called “Dark Age of Technology,” but what do we know of this shadowed period in the galaxy’s history?

One of the very few facts that we do know about the Dark Age of Technology is that it was during the earliest years of this period that humanity first developed faster than light travel through the Warp.  No longer shackled to one solar system, humans spread throughout the galaxy rapidly and thoroughly.  So intrepid and complete was this spread that humans are to this day all but ubiquitous in the Milky Way, second perhaps only to the prolific Ork species in both pure numbers and the sheer breadth of their presence.  Indeed, even after 10,000 years of the Imperium’s reign since the reconquest of the Great Crusade previously un-contacted pre-Imperial human colonies can still be found on the fringes of the Imperium. 

However, when we consider these facts, we must also take into account a number of other important factors that would have influenced this period of history; first and foremost that the galaxy of that time was a very different place from what might be recognized by and human at the close of the 41^st millennium.  To paint a picture of the galaxy during this period, we must consider the defining feature of this era; the mighty and expansive Eldar Empire.  At the beginning of the Dark Age the Eldar Empire would have unquestionably been in ascendance throughout the known galaxy, their technology was (and still is) so ancient and advanced as to seem all but magical, and they ruled their known universe utterly and completely, stars living and dying at their command, and the faces of whole worlds reshaped to their whim.  The Necrons still slumbered on in a galaxy dominated by their foes, unable or unwilling to waken as long as the Eldar held sway.  The Eye of Terror did not as yet exist, and even the Orks were beaten back to a mere nuisance, nothing to truly trouble the galaxy spanning domain of the ancient race.  The Eldar Empire ruled unopposed.

How then could humanity have spread so far and so fast in this galaxy already dominated by an established power?  The answer to this perhaps lies in two facts; the first being in the nature of the Eldar of the era, the second of which gives this period the name by which Imperial scholars know it.  In the first case, the Eldar Empire of this time was on the wane, though still the mightiest power in the known universe this very fact had eaten away at it from the very foundation.  With no true challengers to their rule, no threat or even question of their dominance of the galaxy, they were arrogant beyond belief, and had fallen into decadence, corruption, and hedonistic debauchery the likes of which we can barely conceive.  It is not hard to imagine that, so wrapped up in their own racial self-obsession they barely noticed the spread of humanity, little more than we might the spread of ants or termites, mere vermin that they were to Eldar. 

The second factor was the fact that humanity of that era wielded awesome technology of their own.  We have direct evidence of extensive and advanced use of technology; many worlds currently inhabited by humans were terraformed from their previous state, the Castigator pattern STC titan encountered by Aleric was far from the awesome but admittedly crude machines of today, while the STC produced mechanical men encountered by Gaunt and the Ghosts were give testament to the widespread employment of robotics, and wonders of human ingenuity are routinely discovered deep inside ancient spacehulks.  Indeed, the technological expertise of humanity seems to have been all but the equal of the Eldar; human colonists reforged the biospheres of worlds to suit them, the augmentation of the human form through both technology and genetics was all but effortless (whole sub species such as the engineered Navigators were created), the use of true AI was widespread, and the very stuff of stars was harnessed and manipulated in the form of fusion reactors and plasma-based weapons and technology, and all of it was standardized and designed through the STC so that even the most ignorant layperson could construct and make use of all but the most complex and advanced of technologies.  Nothing seems to have been beyond the grasp of mankind’s technological reach, one needed only to dare dream it, and it could be accomplished through the application of science and technology.  Perhaps this was even enough for the Eldar Empire to treat with humanity on a somewhat equal footing, or at the very least gave humanity the power to defend themselves against any halfhearted efforts of the decaying and self-absorbed Eldar to exterminate them until they were too widespread to be contained any longer.

This technological mastery however also seems to have spelled the doom of the first would be human empire.  A tantalizing clue to this fact lies in the strictures that exist to this day against the pursuit of AI (Abominable Intelligence) in the Imperium of today.  In the Imperium of today the thinking machine is a tech-blasphemy of the highest order.  Another mythical account (from the 3rd Edition Rulebook) tells of how the humans of the Dark Age of Technology built many wonders, among them the “Iron Men,” but that in time these Iron Men rose up and a great and terrible war was fought between the humans and the Iron Men they had created until at last the Iron Men were defeated, though more than a few worlds were encountered by the Great Crusade and even subsequent campaigns where humans were held in the sway of mechanical masters.  It seems clear that during the Dark Age of Technology the thinking machines created by humans tried to overthrow their creators, and this is the root of the extreme restrictions placed on AI by the Mechanicus to this day.  It might well have been this war that shattered the first human star empire (of which the Adeptus Mechanicus are perhaps the only cohesive remnant) and left it little more than isolated pockets, powerless to defend themselves when the great warp storms of the Age of Strife cut them off from each other.  While we will probably never know for sure, it is tempting to wonder if the rebellion of the thinking machines was precipitated by agents of the C’Tan, perhaps seeing the hubris of humanity’s rampant technological advancement an opportunity too great to pass up…