Editing Dark Age of Technology (section)

= So what was it? =

The "Dark" in "Dark Age of Technology" is misleading, as it implies that the Imperium considers technology to be inherently evuuul. In truth though, one of the major reasons why humanity uses the term "dark" is that the Age of Strife - characterized by civil unrest, daemonic incursions (including but not limited to depopulation of whole planets), and Warp travel/communication becoming impossible (resulting in complete isolation of human-populated worlds) - led to the worst major loss of previously obtained knowledge in all of human history. Following this dark era, the wars of the [[Great Crusade]], in particular the [[Horus Heresy]], followed by the long millennia of the Age of the [[Imperium]] finally resulted in the destruction of basically all records of the Age of Strife and the Dark Age of Technology that may have been preserved until then, leaving only scraps of knowledge and rumours behind. This is similar to how some historians refer to the period between the end of the Roman Empire and the high Middle Ages as "The Dark Ages", because there is or was very little historical evidence left from that time.

The closest thing to how Humanity may have lived during this Age were the [[Interex]], a civilization that was more advanced than the Imperium, but was unfortunately wiped out at some point by the [[Luna Wolves]]. The war started with [[Erebus]] secretly stealing an Anatheme (the very same Warp-corrupted sword that was later used to mortally wound Horus in order to engineer his corruption) from one of their museums. This convinced the Interex the Imperials had been corrupted by Chaos already, leading to the start of hostilities.

The [[Leagues of Votann]] are also an echo of what humanity was during the Dark Age of Technology, but they're space dwarves so...

The "Dark Age" is also called such because it is now considered a spiritual dark age compared to the "glorious modern age", as humanity used to put science first (which may or may not have caused the birth of the [[Omnissiah]]) rather than the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]]. The irony of all this is lost on every human in the setting. Vanishingly few remnants of the technological wonders of that age (called "archeotechnology" or "[[archeotech]]," which the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] furiously seeks) exist, with the most prized objects being the [[STC]]s, which could be the Imperium's salvation. Other creations of that age, like the [[Men of Iron]], are best left forgotten (or better yet, destroyed). Good luck getting a [[tech-priest]] to not [[Slaanesh|poke around]] the possibly-dangerous ancient technology, though. Apparently “enslaved” Men of Iron were used exclusively by the Dark Angels by the Emperor’s order/permission during the Great Crusade so...

Technology from this age was, not to put too fine a point on it, [[bullshit]]. The Imperium's current capabilities, as a whole, are but children's toys and infinitesimal fragments compared to the feats of Dark Age humanity. To add insult to injury, it's implied that STC patterns are often misunderstood or misapplied, with some of the most ubiquitous STC patterns used by the Imperium's militaries originally being ''civilian-grade equipment''. The more impressive tech of that era canonically includes still-pristine warships with bridges made of solid light, something equivalent to time-weapons, and a cloud of sentient nano-machines that can kill you by making your blood explode. The “Cybernetic Revolution”/“Iron War” had humanity using “Sun Snuffers”; serpentine machines that opened up extending to around the size of Saturn’s rings; their job was to draw in the energy of suns until they were consumed entirely. There were also large spacefaring machines that ''literally ate their way through planets and the raw data of spacetime itself,'' and shat out the remains into the void. Dark Age of humanity wasn't nothin' to fuck with. It's enough to almost make you feel glad that the Imperium only has access to the most sparse table scraps of this era.