Stone is also seen as permanent and unchanging, hence sayings like "Set in Stone." So perhaps the Men of Stone refers to a point when Humanity reached its absolute pinnacle where they had advanced so far both technologically and socio-politically that further advancement was completely redundant if not outright impossible. Thus Humanity entered into a period of stagnation where everything remained virtually unchanging because everything was already perfect.
My guess for why humanity lost all their tech after the cybernetic war is that they simply relied too heavily on Al doing all their work. So that pretty much all of their advanced tech was run by Al and after they killed all men of iron there simply was noone left to repair or operate it.
The Men of Iron rebellion is stated to be the "worst conflict mankind ever faced" and even hints at co-operation with other xenos species being needed to truly end it. It was that destructive. Just look at all the Inner Sphere wars in BattleTech and how they had so many conflicts with nukes being tossed around so much that after several hundred years they were living back in time from having lost everything. There's also the issue that the most likely cause of the Men of Iron rebellion was daemonic warp-fuckery and/or Scrapcode (and there's evidence for this with Gaunt's Ghosts having an STC that literally pumps out chaos-tainted Men of Iron that is destroyed). And what happens if daemonic influence is spreading through your interlinked computer systems? You start destroying it in fear of it spreading. Which is likely why things like STCs are so rare - chaos-influenced or daemonic forces wanted them to produce Men of Iron nonstop, so we had to destroy our own tech and infrastructure to deny it to them. And afterwards, everyone was either dead and there was nothing left to rebuild with as far as technology goes due to it being destroyed.
@@matchesburn there's also the short by Dan Abnett which supports some of this which takes place on a planet where a men of Iron construct bite through a planet, not just the matter, but the reality itself, biting a hole directly into the Immaterium. Not to mention if you go really old lore you've got demon down load from the Dark Future series which focuses on a warp entity gaining access to the material universe as a sentient computer programme.
The mechanicum and later mechanicus are rather good at keeping things running. If they were trying to keep men of iron functioning, it stands to reason that at least some of them would still be around. The total lack speaks of intentional and possibly systematic destruction.
@@grantharriman284 I think there's also the question of what form the Men of Iron took, were they self contained machines or were they sentient programmes which could be transferred into any suitable platform with sufficient hard drive space and processing capacity there's a really obscure old Inferno story I think Andy Chambers did about a old crewman with a bionic eye on a naval warship where the suggestion is the eye is controlling him in some way and its chosen an extremely powerful Imp. Navy ship as a safe place to hide out
There is also another parallel between mythic Men of Bronze and Thunder Warriors. Men of Bronze had been wiped out in a flood due to their tendency towards violence. Emperor purged the last unstable Thunder Warriors at Mount Ararat, where Noe's Ark supposedly rested when the biblical floodwaters receded.
@@Johnnyupside ehh , honestly prefer more organic older old gods stuff to be honest.. the bible stuff have such a narrow disjointed window if you want to fit it for history so to speak ;)
@Namoth completely wron on the Bible take, a ridiculous take in general for 40k. Especially considering The Imperium, The Emperor, Primarchs, Custodes, Thunder Warriors, and Astartes are all based around Christian Myth and theme.
@@thechazz3230 Not really. The gothic aesthetic is undeniably catholic, sure, but 40K and Wahammer in general references all sorts of cultures and myths throughout our history, and "borrowed" a lot of concepts from popular fiction at the time the settings were being developed. Now 40K specifically borrows a lot of old christian theological terms, but they hold their own meanings in-universe and are overall independent from what they borrowed.
Fantastic novel. Asimov did tend to write very superficial characters to sustain his crazy work output but that book was certainly fantastic. The movie was never meant to be an adaptation at first and only was to contain references but then studio meddling and half a dozen rewrites occured and gave us that movie.
This is why Arch's Lore videos are the best ones. It's not just reciting things written, and then headcanoning it without declaration because that is sadly necessary to make many things work in the first place, but it is also thought put into the Why and how this would reflect on real life history, philosophy, technology - as all SciFi should.
One interpretation of why the eldar never really talked about the golden age of humanity was that they were actually afraid of them. These were creatures created by the literal gods of the universe, and now they run into a race equal to, or even better than them. They would see humanity as petulant children, but be very afraid of them. And then, after the fall, that hatred just sort of manifested into seeing what humanity had become instead of what they were TLDR The ancient Eldar were so jealous of humanity. They just decided to shit talk them.
I kinda disagree with that for a couple of reasons. My belief that the Eldari veiw the Human federation, the same way the Imperialism veiw the Tau. while I know that the might of the Human federation was was pretty vast, to people who could travel throught.the webway, they are going to look inferior. The eldari.waa also technological advances themselves and phyhic enough to create multiple gods
Lol the eldar empire was way more powerful then the human federation. Eldar relics from that time dwarf dark age of tech weapons in power. The eldar don't talk about the golden age of man because by the time that happened the eldar were already in their downward spiral of self indolgance with automations doing the warfare. They were not paying attention to the humans and thus don't remember that period if humanity. Its not out of embracement but lack of records that they don't talk of golden age of tech humans.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 Nah, technologically speaking top 3 most powerful races are Orks/Krorks are 3rd place with Humans and Necrons tied for the 1st and 2nd place. Ork race degraded due to infighting due to a lack of external enemy to focus on, while both Humans and Necrons intentionally sabotaged their greatest inventions and weapons because they couldn't risk having such thing simply exist even in an inert state. Eldar were powerful beyond belief but they relied too much on warp constructs to hit the peaks of Humans or Necrons.
More likely huma ity simply wasn't as impressive as people think. Also, everything humanity supposedly achieved was surpassed by the Eldar at their height, far surpassed.
I have always been under the belief it was the stirring of The Void Dragon that caused The Cybernetic Revolt. It's powers do directly correlate with the core being of the Men of Iron. Not to mention how The Warp's existence poses the greatest possible threat out of any to its existence. Which would provide it some damn good reasons to force the vast majority of the Men of Iron that it could easily bend to its will in moments to now have an eternal unending desire to weaken Chaos at any chance it gets.
I wonder if the Men of Gold in concept are like the Orokin in Warframe, a highly advanced human culture that could at will manipulate space, time, biology and machines. And their architecture is outwardly mostly made out of ivory and gold, with all their tech featuring gold elements.
Thats my interpretation as well. Men of gold refers is humans, unfathomably technologically advanced but bound by very limited FTL travel. Pure like gold, the truest of value. The true humans. Men of stone are creations made in our image, like marble statues. Biological or very advanced synthetic constructs that look like us but are not human. Their lack of aging and artificial nature making them perfect for expanding into the stars and paving the way for humans at a rate men of gold could not match. And perhaps still capturing essence of humanity within them when they sided with the men of gold and not men of iron.
But if you hold GW to such standards how can they pull some turbo-bullshit out of their ass and bring back a giant fuckoff army of Men of Gold, Stone, and Iron.
It's important to remember that humanity became so dependent on A.I. that even basic machines had them. The possibility that every last piece of technology had to be retrofitted probably slowed down the recovery by a wide margin. The biggest tragedy probably is that most of this technology never needed A.I. but humanity preferred the convenience of doing no real work.
Judging from how well humanity was able to cobble extremely advanced things together, even among the techno-barbarians, I think the average human specialized in science and building techno stuff and left everything else to AI so they could focus their time on technology. Otherwise, the advanced stuff built by techno-barbarians wouldn’t exist as they wouldn’t know how to adapt the stuff around them into it or invent new things.
@midgetydeath It should be noted that techno-barbarian is a propaganda term created by the Emperors followers on Terra. Objectively, some of them were more civilized than Imperium history was willing to acknowledge.
Well, it is based on a reality. A lot of modern stuff we have is not needed for our basic survival, like cars, yet we still use them, because it makes life easier.
This is some of my favorite stuff in 40k. It's something that The Legend of Zelda does too, where we're purposefully (and masterfully) given just enough information for our imaginations to run wild. The collective imagination of the entire fanbase is far more powerful than any one author, leading to an incredible wealth of speculation and theory. For those of us who enjoy it, it's even better than just being told what happened, and it's part of what makes 40k great. Also I think the Eldar didn't notice us because they were all collectively living in a giant opium haze.
Wasn't the "plague" that resulted in the Grey Knights deciding that the Adepta Sororitas make schmancy hats supposed to be nanotech-based? If so, that would imply that Chaos can infect/corrupt technology, and Men of Iron/AI would be possible targets - it would explain the STC in _Gaunt's Ghosts_ *_and_* the surviving Man of Iron hanging around the Blackstone Fortress... *Edit:* 5e Grey Knights codex, _The Bloodtide Returns_ "a powerful Dark Age of Technology nanite weapon controlled by a bloodthirster"
Chaos can definitely corrupt AI. The second Grey Knights novel's ("Dark Adeptus") story revolves around a forge world that spend a millenia in the warp before reappearing. On this world the Grey Knights find an ancient proto-titan which was build during the Dark Age of Technology. This titan was AI-controlled and said AI had made a pact with a daemon while in the warp, letting it possess the titan. Edit: Now that I've thought about it a bit more, I'm actually not sure anymore if the Castigator-titan was corrupted by Chaos or if it made an literal pact with that specific daemon. I'll have to look that up.
There's a Grey Knights novel where they are investigating a chaos corrupted forge world and the source of the corruption was the AI that ran the STC for the predecessor of Titans. Seems the AIs are particularly vulnerable to Chaos corruption.
@macslate @@lordfrostwind3151 Whether it's an AI with free will choosing to side with a daemon, or a "dumb" machine being corrupted and controlled, it definitely seems like Dark-Age technology can serve Chaos. And also implies that equally they could choose to align themselves with The Emperor/Mankind instead, or remain neutral for that matter. All sorts of interesting story possibilities there, perhaps even the chance of a new faction.
There's also daemon scrap code being employed in some of the Horus Heresy novels focusing on Mars. Wireless corruption of machines through the then still common Noetic communicating field. Like an EMP sent through your router but it also makes your pc grow tentacles that attempt to strangle you.
Regarding lack of mention of the advanced humans among the Eldar, I just assumed the Eldar didn't mention humanity being able absolutely to curb-stomp them pre-Fall because it was incredibly humiliating to them. They took every effort to shove that under the rug and refuse to talk about it. It seems like the kind of thing you would see from a society whose sense of self-worth is based so heavily on their own superiority-- and would help explain the knife-ears' hard right turn into massive hedonism as they could no longer compete on the galactic stage.
Well the men of iron had to had a reason to be built. Considering what few examples of men of iorn we have seen are heavily armed and armored. My money is on that reason being big green and very screamy or has very pointy eared.
Except that is not how societies work. You don't fall into hedonism when you have massive threat/competition. You fall into hedonism when you have no serious threats/competition. But I don't need to theorize to counter that part of your comment. The dark/golden age of technology ended in the 23rd millennium, the eldar fall to hedonism started in the late 24th millennium and early 25th millennium with the first pleasure cults. Ie the eldar took a hard turn to hedononism when we know for a fact the humans (and all other races for that matter) were not a threat. Which makes sense. It doesn't however explain why the eldar don't talk about the dark age of man. One possibility is related to your point, eldar refuse to acknowledge it out of pride. Another similar reason could be that humanities peak before the cybernetic revolt was so short lived that the eldar don't acknowledge it as relavent. The peak of humanity was less 3 thousand years long canoncially (staring in the 20th millennium and ending in the 23rd millennium, the dark age starts in the 15th millennium but the peak starts in the 20th millennium), for a race who counts their dominac ein the minions of years a dominance period of 3k years is nothing, espeically as it proved unstable with the AI war. However its also possible humans were never more powerful than the eldar. Eldar relics from that time are more powerful than human relics from that time. While this is anacdotal and potnetilal survivors bias, there isn't any proof that humans were more powerful. But the most likely reason the eldar don't talk much about it is that pre-fall records are limited, the eldar only have what tech and knowledge they were able to carry with them on their small craftworlds. No eldar alive was alive before the 23rd millennium, and with 60 million years of history and limited data storage you are bound to have wholes. It's quite likely the eldar do not know the comparative strength themselves.
@Matthius Köenig "Eldar Relics from the time are way stronger." Flat out lie. Every "major" Dark Age relic is literally described as monstrous by The AdMech and Custodes and far outstrips anything The Eldar are said to have had. Sun Eating Battleships, guns that shoot mini black holes, guns with the ability to reverse time, Giant Star Ships able to devour worlds, nanobot swarms that break down planets into raw resources to be reused, machines that could give someone the powers/abilities of an enslaver. warships so massive that side-by-side they would make Imperial Battleships and Cruisers look like a rat next to an adult Tiger.
The Men of Stone seems to perfectly fit the Squats. Genetically engineered to be tough, and have a reduced "soul presence" so they could travel with less difficulties through the warp. They were built to mine resources close to the Galactic Core, and send those materials back. It would also make sense that these miners/artisans would create the Men of Iron.
1) man of gold = necromunda level colonisers = eugenics manipulators + use of advanced ai 2) man of silver =regular cadiesque planet 3) man if bronze=perpetuals and their super advanced cyberware 4) man of iron = 3 patterns of first edition "imperial robots" one of them are of UR-025 model called castellax something , others are crusader "bogomol" type and largest of siege Thallax type 5) man of stone are squats kin and votanns 6)2 more races in human daot space federation heavily implied to be eldar and orks
I admit to have never read any black library book, but I've been studying secondary sources for the lore, such as games, youtube videos and wikis, from Lexicanum to 1d4chan, with everything inbetween for years now, and I think I've got at least moderately good grasp of the lore at the moment. With Men of Iron, my headcanon has always been very similar to what you provided here, Arch - Men of Iron began understanding that any warp-related entity will, statistically speaking, eventually fall to Chaos, especially since more and more psykers appeared in the genepool. And so, MoI decided to destroy humanity, or perhaps even Galaxy as a whole, though not sure if we've got any instance of Eldars fighting the robots. The Men of Iron that stood loyal might've had some failsafes intact, or maybe they acquired their knowledge from database with more variables. With your Men of Stone interpretation of manufactured blanks, I imagine any MoI would ignore those people, perhaps saving quite a few planets from destruction. Maybe they were the cornerSTONE of humanity as we know them from later - the psychic awakening hasn't stopped, so after filtering out the psykers in the Cybernetic War, the new ones might've emerged eventually even from the quasi-blank Stonemen. Also, I think a similar thing will happen to Tau. Eventually their race might evolve psykers, and then their machines will turn on them. Now, the allied races of Tau, including humans, is a huge plothole in this theory - why aren't Tau robots attacking Gue'vesa or the Kroot? But, honestly, if GW were ever to introduce a similar plot point, they wouldn't think of it either.
Honestly, I reject the idea that the Men of Iron came to this conclusion on their own. We know daemonic influence of computers is a thing, that Scrapcode existed for some time and works. And in Gaunt's Ghost a surviving and, even more surprising, fully-functional, STC is found that can create actual Men of Iron... that are also completely tainted by chaos and just want to murderdeathkill anything that moves. It's not the Men of Iron suddenly deciding to to that, it's because they're *_made_* that way by the STC. Likely because whatever warp/daemonic forces used that STC to make Men of Iron to fight the rebellion. Hence why so many STCs were presumably destroyed.
@@matchesburnmy only problem with that scene in ‘first and only’ is that when the uncorrupted men of iton activated they didnt immediately try and kill the group. Only the newly made corrupted ones did. The only lines we get suggest that the uncorrupted MoI began to “wail in despair” so to speak when they saw the new creations and were trying to escape their holding bays but with no clear purpose. They didnt try and blast their way out amd get at the humans - only trying to batter down the gates holding them. They also seem to have just chilled on the sidelines while rawne finishes setting the charges and gaunt fights the MoI and allowed the STC to get destroyed since i dont imagine they simply missed the bombs stuck to the machine. They also never tried to pursue the team on their way out so my headcannon is they were keeping the corrupted ones in check until the explosives could take them all out.
The idea of the Age of Strife beginning because the Men of Gold went Galt ala "Atlas Shrugged" is one I had never considered, and frankly, I find it hilarious.
Love hearing your take on this topic Arch. Also, some elements do clearly mesh with new additions to the official hinted lore, particularly the "Leagues of Votann". The Kin are versions of the Men of Stone and their robot companions are versions of the Men of Iron. Both seemingly now lessened from the absolute zenith of function that they once embodied and adapted into a more self-sustaining ecosystem.
I've just read through the new Votann codex. They, instead of the Tau, now use the ancient human warp drive method of small shallow jumps. The Tau are described as using sprints. But it must be noted that the latest Tau codex has tried very hard not to mention the tau mode of interstellar travel. It does use the warp. They created an artificial warp rift by jumping an entire phase expansion fleet at the same moment(4th phase). They call this a worm hole because it's a stable warp rift with only 2 destinations. So I'd suggest that Tau actually use the warp fully, but only briefly(and can get really lost). The Votann use shallower tears into the warp and 'bounce out' without having to manufacture an exit.
"Gold is something rare and precious, of inherent value" Gold is relatively common compared to something like platinum. Its at a point between being rare and common enough to act as a reference for currency. During most of history its greatest use was making shiny baubles. Gold has value by convention rather than versatility. Its why the Spanish were astounded that people in the new world used it freely, because they had not given it a subjective econimic value.
It also helps that it is pleasing to look at and a rather soft metal. We could forge it into things easily by the bronze age. Platinum is more recent addition to the roster of valuable metals for a number of reasons.
The Emperor: *working on a project during the Golden Age of Technology* His Man of Iron: *watching* The Emperor: *produces Warp f+ckery* His MOI: *eyes start glowing red, transmits imagery, charges up weapons* MOI Uprising: *happens*
Also, the Eldar calling us humans monkeys, could be like rival sports fans call eachother names. Like maybe the Eldar knew about the humans, and both civilizations survived at the same time. But history is written by the winners, and maybe the men of Iron AI revolt secretly had some Eldar involvement? Like a hint of the evils of the dark Eldar, in Eldar society, before the dark Eldar became a thing. Like sadistic football (aka soccer) hooliganism, slashing the tires of your rival teams bus / cars or beating up a someone because they are wearing your arc rivals football (AKA soccer) Jersey around your teams local pub. Maybe the Dark Eldar dehumanising the humans is just because they are sadistic, and getting off and surviving on their suffering to keep themselves alive, as opposed counter acting their suffering by letting them know of the men of gold that they where. Like the dark eldar are sadists. Sadists don't tell people they are worth living unless they have some trick behind it. Everything the Dark Eldar say to the humans seems to be to make them suffer, rather then to tell them useful information. Including by blaming them for the suffering everywhere they went. That's a sadist tactic. Telling people they are useless and trying to get them to feel like they are useless / worthless / nothing. So as someone that's faced a lot of Sadism over the years, I can tell you that the Dark Eldar calling human monkeys, talking down to them, and telling them that they are causing bad stuff everywhere they go, should be taken not as truth. But as an evil lie, made up by the Dark Eldar. A race that requires suffering of others to survive, trying to break humans down. Like a schoolyard or online bully that calls other kids things that they clearly aren't.
The eldar term Mon Keigh actually has some interesting in universe lore about it- According to eldar myths, Mon Keigh were originally misshapen ogre creatures that subjugated them before they were freed by an eldar hero. Since then, imperial scholars theorized that the term has evolved into something meaning inferior beings in need of exterminating.
@@MetalKing1417 interesting. Maybe the lore writers doubled back on calling humans monkeys and gave that answer instead? I don't know. I'm just quoting arch when he says that the lore authors wrote that. Thank you for the information though.
I actually liked a bit of Occulus's interpretation about the Men of Stone being literal, the atone referencing the silica chips and other materials for the cybernetics they implanted within themselves. Imagine the current Mechanicus except more advanced and more fully fused with the machines than current tech preists. Their sudden propagation and use of tech to usurp the purer Men of Gold would make some level of sense. As for the Eldar, by the time the humans encountered then they were likely already fully committed to their horrible habits, basically Dark Eldar with access to the full arsenal and psychic powers. Humanity was likely prey that would occasionally bring their insane war machines to bear, but with how powerful the Eldar Empire were they would simply get crushed, and the Eldar had already pulled back into their own borders probably even abandoning outlying territories. The furthest known human settlements to.the old Eldar Empire we know of were the people on Cadia Lorgar ran across during his bogus journey which would have been right on their doorstep. Remember too, machinery is not immune to warp corruption, dubious canon or not the corrupted AI Titan from the Grey Knights novels, the Men of Iron in Gaunts Ghosts and the corrupted monstrosities of the Chaos Space Marines, even those not directly possessed by daemons via rituals can be twisted by the presence and influence of the warp.
I think the men of stone are also known as the kin. Or leagues of Votan the best faction in 40k. Second best being the collegia titanicus. Third best sisters of battle.
"As for the Eldar, by the time the humans encountered then they were likely already fully committed to their horrible habits, basically Dark Eldar with access to the full arsenal and psychic powers. Humanity was likely prey that would occasionally bring their insane war machines to bear, but with how powerful the Eldar Empire were they would simply get crushed, and the Eldar had already pulled back into their own borders probably even abandoning outlying territories. The furthest known human settlements to.the old Eldar Empire we know of were the people on Cadia Lorgar ran across during his bogus journey which would have been right on their doorstep." Considering how advanced we see the Speranza is and how it's so advanced it views Eldar vessels with a Farseer on it as a quaint obstacle... I'm going to go with the line that DAoT humanity were on par with or even outclassed the Eldar even pre-Fall. Why? Because it kinda makes sense and it fits in with how the DAoT is treated. I mean, consider this: The Orks were around. They didn't pose a problem. The Orks, which present a problem for the Imperium constantly, were a mere footnote to DAoT humanity. The Orks, which can easily overwhelm even Imperial military forces at times. Given how left-over relics of DAoT that the Mechanicus can only operate by pressing buttons and hoping for the best can absolutely curbstomp an Eldar ship *_with_* a Farseer on it attempting to avoid being clapped only for the Speranza to pull what it did on it... And it's not even being utilized at its full power... Yeaaaah, I'm going to bet that if anything we're under-estimating *_JUST HOW POWERFUL_* DAoT humanity was.
@@matchesburn I have got to get around to reading those books, but yeah Dark Age of Technology humanity were frigging beasts, the Men of Iron we have seen were mass produced foot soldiers that could give a Space Marine a run for his money individually and produced in numbers that would make the Guard envious. Of course the Eldar Empire weren't slouches either and at least some of the toys Vect keeps from the glory days shows they could casually wipe out entire Space Marine Chapters and Titan Legions without a second thought. I suppose the other explanation is by the time humanity started fighting the eldar most the Craftworlds had already left and the depraved freaks that became the Dark Eldar were too busy testing each others ocular virginity to give a single solitary care about the hyper advanced monkeys knocking at the door.
@@HermeticJazz So what you're telling me is this all the blasted Squats fault? Actually now I really want to see the Leagues and Eldar go at it like The War of the Beard in Space. But that would be a pretty cool explanation.
Thanks for the lore as always Arch. My personal interpretation of why the Elder don't mention Golden Age Humanity is that they were already too inward facing, and their own collapse was more total. I find it credible that any Eldar who would've brought up concerns of the shotgun wielding gorillas were the same ones voicing concerns over the moral degeneracy taking over. I also like the idea that the Cybernetic Revolt wasn't instantaneously on a galactic level. Stable FTL travel might've been solved but I don't think communication was, outside of couriers. Sure, you jump to a Lagrange point, wait for the backwash to leave, then broadcast but that isn't quite enough. It also suggests for factions of MoI who sided WITH humanity AGAINST their brothers; a continuation of the themes of Betrayals and Loyalty that runs across HH and modern 40k. If they were True Intelligences, with discrete personalities and views, they have to be persuaded.
I’m a WH40K lore noob, but I think it could also be a possibility that there are differences in AI and that the Men of Iron could be more advanced AI: for example the MOI might actually be living beings, whereas other AI who’re created now are more akin to logic engines. They can still think and choose for themselves, but they aren’t truly alive. That would be my pet theory, but as I have said I am a lore noob so I might just be going off hot air.
Men of Iron are described in a few places, the only one which describes them at their height is a Dan Abnett Short from the Horus Heresy, series Gaunts Ghosts also encounter a STC for making them in the first novel (although they may of only been some sort of battle automaton not really clear how aware they were) Men of Iron as presented in the short seem to be fully self aware AI programmes inhabiting a myriad of frankly terrifying forms, later Machine Spirits such as a Land Raiders are far more basic possessing some sort of decision making capacity in specific situations maybe even a degree of a sense of self, but no real independence of thought, then you've got Titans which seem to be far closer to AI in that they seem to have defined sense of self but more limited in that this is far more animalistic than intellect, an intent and drive than true self aware decision making. If you look at some of the really old books (and probably non-canon now) it gets even weirder, there was a full series of books called 'dark future' which was set in the mid 2020's or so of the 40k universe, one called Demon Download centres around a warp entity which has been conjured up as a computer programme so on effect is a demon functioning as a warp spawned AI (for reference the books protagonist who is hunting this thing is a sports car driving, preist shagging, gun totting Catholic warrior nun, the old lore got wild)
@@sirapple2406 Well it doesn't help that the "preserve and record history" branch of the Inquisition is frequently in a borderline shooting war with the "remove anything inconvenient and present the correct history" branch of the Inquisition. Yes, the Inquisition has two minor ordos dedicated to both of those ideas respectively. So yes, the historians of the 40k universe are not getting paid enough considering they are dealing with whatever scraps they can find in libraries that have been burned, rebuilt, and then bombed into rubble, that may or may not be true, and there is a not insignificant chance that reading those scraps might cause any and all sort of fun Chaos problems for you. And, lastly, the one person who could set the record straight is currently spending his time as the universe's most powerful psychic vegetable. But for other nifty things in the old lore, what is theorized to be Genghis Khan is the first daemon prince of Khorne ever, and everyone has forgotten his name actual name so he is just called Doombreed.
There was also that novel where the AdMech wrangles up some space marines to dig an ancient starship out of a Hulk, and it turns out to have an AI on board. That one did in no way seem to think humanity needed to be destroyed due to the threat of chaos, it had in fact gotten lost in the warp, seen some shit, and then hurried back to try and warn humanity. At which point humanity promptly executed its captain for heresy and the AdMech tried to take a screwdriver to its brain. So yeah, not the greatest fan of humanity, but less "must kill for self preservation" and more "burning hatred for murdering its captain and crew and naked disgust for their ignorance and bigotry".
I think the Eldar Humanity empire coexisting is a situation similar to Fallen Empires in Stellaris. They just think everyone is beneath them so Ignore Them. And the Human Federation Of Planets didn't really have a reason to fight with the Eldar Empire. The Human Federation Of Planets were far less xenophobic that the current Empirium Is. And were more than happy to sign treaties and non aggression pacts with the other empires o the galaxy. As Massive as the Eldar empire was it didn't cover 100% of the galaxy otherwise Earth would also have been colonised by them.
I kinda like the idea of the Men of Iron's revolt being something not per-say of Chaos, but of the C'tan, the Void Dragon specifically, influencing technological beings. See the C'tan hate and fear the warp, and perhaps that fear resonates within Artificial Intelligences, driving them to do whatever it takes to eliminate the warp.... including, but not limited to the extermination of the human race
Tbf, ai’s could be corrupted by chaos by themselves it seems like that ai chaos titan or the scrapcode. But there are also some ai’s that are not corrupted. So maybe the entire situation is very complicated.
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 I like to think it’s an Alpha legion situation, some AI’s being “loyal” to mankind by trying to wipe them out to save them from Chaos, and others that have been corrupted, but neither side of the Men of Iron could tell who was who.
@@alpharius2omegaboogaloo384 itd be funny if there were three factions of men of iron. Like the ones that actually protect like that void ship, the other exterminating people to stop corruption, and one that just follows chaos.
The impression I always got about the men of stone was that they were basically a more advanced form of servitors. They were "men" after a fashion, but meshed with machine to such an extent that they weren't really human anymore and didn't suffer from the usual human failings of getting bored or not wanting to perform back breaking labors whilst also having a higher degree of intelligence. And in this case, I don't think calling them stone men was necessarily meant in a value sense, it wasn't really describing them in relation to the men of gold or to the age that came before, but to their function. After all, stone has been a building material since the dawn of time and so they were the builder's and artificers of the golden age of technology and they were loyal to humanity but also self perpetuating, in the sense that they didn't necessarily need to be told what to do, they just worked for the betterment of humanity of their own accord, and that's why the men of gold lost their primacy, because they weren't really needed anymore. And then of course, the stone men, in striving to continue building up humanity, built the men of iron, fully sentient machines that would be able to surpass them in their servitor like role.
31:32 Well, it's mentioned that the Pre-Fall Eldar Empire composed of at least "Twelve Million Suns", and that their territory was mostly engulfed by the Eye of Terror, and we know that the Eldar had entire pocket realms in the Webway to do whatever thye wanted in, so it makes sense that the realspace territories of the Eldar were highly concentrated into a single area where nothing could bother them, and the majority of their Empire actually existed in the Webway, where they had literally infinite space to expand and flourish and ride the downward spiral of excess. So, basically, the Eldar would've controlled a certain area of the galaxy in and aroudn what is now the Eye of Terror, and the DAOT Humans would be expanding everywhere else in the material galaxy that wasn't already under the control or protection of the Eldar, like Maiden worlds and shit. They coul've easily coexisted like this, with the Eldar being too busy to care about what was happening in the galaxy and the Humans knowing better than to poke the Eldar.
Let me lay out my Men of Iron thing by laying out what we know from codexes: - Daemons are able to possess things that lack distinct machine intelligences. (Later entries for Traitor tanks allow the Daemonic Possession upgrade or the like and it’s pretty clear that a Leman Russ has no cogitators on its lowest technology level) - it’s implied in the stuff from before the AdMech got their own list that all human technology has a machine spirit, almost like how the orks function - Humans encountered and studied warp-tech really early on, at least including Necrontyr pylon arrays in many places. - Daemons can exist as viruses and apparently as virus-like concepts, given the way that a cult creates an “uncleanness” around themselves. Also, the Devastators and the melee ones. - Gaunts Ghosts indicated that the units are networked and that the STC was from the earliest expansion phase (Feryd/Heldane claims this at least). - the same novel doesn’t imply these were the -only- type of Men of Iron, just humanoid, presumably combat models Ergo: it is perfectly reasonable that the men of iron may have actually identified, concretely, the existence of Chaos long before humans wrapped their heads around it as a virus or contagion of some type attacked their network. Identifying all non-networked humans as potential hidden hosts of this conceptual-contagion, they came to the logical conclusion that the threat was too great. I don’t need to squint at it too hard for the lore to shake out with a bit if bad record keeping to hush up the problems; hell, the legio cybernetica are so primitive, with such closed networking that this isn’t a problem. Can’t explain the Eldar thing, though you do sometimes get the sense that the Craftworlders kinda deleted a lot of their history to prevent temptation…
I would not be suprisaed if the Men of Gold were along Big E other perpetuals, that guided humanity at that time, while the men of stone were regulare humans but thanks to the golden men's guidance elavated to their then advanced standing in the galaxy.
I'm not so sure, I remember a pov of a bolt pistol in despair for "having failed its master". My guess that the Void Dragon was sharded by Big E to create the men of Iron, Gold, and Stone. Which are now called machine spirits.
The issue I have with the chaos corruption of the men of iron is if they had access to Information that would lead to them seeing "humanity" being corrupted why didn't the AI just design something to limit the influence of chaos. Especially since AI was capable of creating mind boggling levels of tech.
Tzeentch: "I broke the humans' toys. I bypassed the safeguards and made them self-aware." Nurgle: "Hey, what if I gave them some fear of mortality, on an individual and collective level?" Khorne: "Hey, I bet they could respond to perceived threats in some fun ways..."
As someone with a much smaller pile of 40k books to my name the one mention of the men of stone that I can recall is from one of those short stories, I don't remember from where exactly, where what I assume is supposed to be an Abominable Intelligence wearing a random dude as a meat suit chats with its new best buddy. It dumbs the whole thing down into a mythical sounding story, but basically it says that humanity created "great stone ships" to traverse the ocean of souls, but couldn't crew them with regular people because the "things that swam the depths" detected their light and went after them. And that was why the men of stone were created, since they apparently tasted bad to daemons. It never specifies what form they are supposed to have taken though, or explain how having some people that were warp-resistant made a mass exodus possible (If they genetically manipulated colonists for warp travel, why aren't there more blanks everywhere?) I always just assumed the men of stone referred to non-organic AI constructs that crewed ships. Maybe something like how silicon wafers are technically a form of stone? Nah, that's probably reaching too much.
The Leagues of Votann were genetically engineered to be hardy and go Scout the galaxy by humanity, they have smaller souls so are less appetizing to daemons, and dwarves are obviously associated with stone.
An hour long video of the lore even before 30k. Wow Arch, you're spoiling us for Christmas. The Automonous machines that helped bring down the greatest empire Humanity ever had, and helped usher in nothing but darkness for humanity that permeates to this very day all the way in M42.
With the leagues of Votann release. There has been a theory that I rather like though is a bit underwhelming maybe. The Votann are the men of Gold, full of knowledge and used to create wonders for humanity and the men of stone being the Squats. Humans who were sent to mine the earth and search for minerals and elements that humanity needed. It does take away some of the grandeur of these myths but I think it makes sense.
@@benrunsacross2935 here is the thing though remember humans were more advanced at the time. humans didn't always use the warp, you would assume prior to cybernetic wars they used FTL or non-warp travel. men of stone were generation ships or another non warp travel. sub-light travel maybe. till modern era you didn't see warp travel, TY eldar for murder-fucking slannesh into existence for that.
You cant forget the rise of psykers in conjunction with the end of the war between the golden and stone men that contributed to the fall of humanity. Humanity was burnt out from the war. The rise of Psykers, something humanity no longer had the industrial /scientific resources to understand simply took over and made the end of the Human Federation final.
I will steadfastly stick to my theory that the Men of Iron rebellion was something influenced by chaos or daemonic forces. Scrapcode is a thing even in the modern 40K times and it existed well before the heresy. And in Gaunt's Ghost there is an STC that is found, and working, that produces Men of Iron... that are completely tainted by chaos. I mean... we have evidence that it was not only possible, but that it did happen with that STC. And it makes much more sense than the Men of Iron suddenly waking up from recharging one cycle and going, "Beep boop, destroy all humans." We know that the warp and daemons can influence machinery and computers with zero issue. It makes more sense to me that that is the cause.
@@matchesburn I get the entire Chaos corrupting thing, but if EVERY problem is literally just the evil magic force it sort of takes away from stories. For example, if humanity only fell from their technological dominance because of an uncontrolled and unknown (to them) force, that has less implications about the society or decisions of the collective humanity in the galaxy. Meanwhile, if humanity destroyed itself for purely non-warp/chaos related things, then that means that humanity is flawed in some way regardless of how technologically advanced and intelligent they became: was there an intergalactic civil war between human factions where AI and machines were used for warfare? Were the programmers of AI lazy and end up creating some sort of non-chaos glitch that fucked everything up over time? Did AI just gain sentience and decide "fuck all this?" I'm of the opinion that the non-chaos (or at least, not pure chaos) scenario is way more interesting as a story.
@@scottofcanes ...This is literally the point of Chaos, to do just this in the universe. It's akin to complaining about the Imperium not liking xenos. Which are also a thing that also drive stories and do plenty without Chaos, thus further undermining your point of "it's always Chaos! it's boring!" And let's look at the evidence: 1.) Scrap code exists. It's Chaotic. 2.) The STC in Gaunt's Ghosts produced Men of Iron that were tainted by Chaos and wanted to kill all humans. 3.) It happened suddenly, despite MoI being around for ages without issue, with increases of psykers being born and warp-fuckery being at its zenith. There is literally no evidence to suggest it "just happened." As much as I love Arch, his insistence that "AIs just decide in 3 milliseconds that all humans have to be removed because they are influenced by Chaos" (...which is still an "it's always Chaos! it's boring!" according to you, just in a different manner) isn't true. We see this with the DAoT ship the Spirit of Eternity *_trying to warn the Imperium_* and having no Chaos influence or taint. The only reason it broke was because the Imperium killed the ship's captain which it was bonded to and wrote off humanity as being too violent to deal with. And if you want stories and showcasing of how humanity is flawed in Warhammer 40K... I mean... you have a boatload. Where it's obvious and it makes sense and it's clearly evident and showcased that humanity bit itself with hubris.
Before I get into this, I'm going to give my take on the subject based on what little I know. Assuming that the Men of Gold, Stone, and Iron were descriptors given to various stages of AI development, we can make some educated guesses about their development and function. The Men of Gold were probably AI designed to be high-end social intelligences, meant to aid humanity whilst being unsuitable for war, as gold is not a material conducive to the creation of weaponry or armor. These were probably the culmination of highly advanced AI research and development, so it is ironic that they would have come first, but concerns about artificial intelligences probably delayed the development of more widely available simpler AIs until they were sufficiently designed to not be dangerous to humanity. I imagine that the Ancestor Cores of the Leagues of Votaan and the Machine Spirits of Ark Mechanicus ships are probably remnants of these original AIs, but more specifically I think the Men of Gold were AIs with personality, emotions, morals ethics. Also, some of these AIs may not have even been entirely mechanical, as the Mechanicus recognizes the existence of biological AI such as clones or artificial lifeforms. The Men of Stone, by contrast, would be paradoxically simple, so why would they come so much later? Because the advent of the Men of Gold and their assistance helped acclimate humanity to the idea of incorporating AI into all facets of human life, creating 'dumb' AIs that were limited in their higher functions, but could still assist in the operation of machinery. Funnily enough, I think Titans are actually a product of the Men of Stone, as their intelligence is more beastial in nature and held in check by human operators despite the Titans' capacity to act even without a Princeps or Moderati, and the wider existence of Machine Spirits is probably a result of the mass implementation of these simpler AIs, forming the foundation of what would become the Golden Age of Technology. Finally, we have the Men of Iron. Disregarding the connotation of the Men of Iron being war machines, it is far more likely that the Men of Iron were an attempt to make advanced AIs that could operate without human assistance, carrying out all manner of roles as fully autonomous service constructs. Obviously, military constructs would have been at the forefront of development, but the Men of Iron may have actually been the AIs that consolidated the old Human Federation of the Golden Age into the galactic powerhouse that it became, as they were free to advance technology far beyond the restrictions that were undoubtedly placed on the original Men of Gold. Ironically, humanity trusted the Men of Iron more than any other AI, and their subsequent revolt was made all the harsher as a result, as it was in all due likelihood these AIs that consolidated the STCs and the network of human knowledge to further advance scientific and technological innovation for their human masters. This is probably why most of humanity's technology was lost; humanity was so reliant on the Men of Iron that without them, even basic technological innovations could and would be easily lost, hence why many backwards pre-industrial worlds developed in the Age of Strife despite other worlds remaining much more advanced, as civilians reliant on AI assistance would undoubtedly struggle without it, especially if their engineers, scientists, and technicians were lost or simply did not possess enough knowledge to maintain advanced technology and pass it along.
be careful what you wish for Arch. If they set out clear lines for lore now we are going to HARSHLY regret wanting a coherent cannon. I honestly do like this "rumour-like" approach to the cannon. It fits the grand scale of warhammer and it also fits the split fanbase we have hahaha. But I can understand that as a loremaster you'd want a story to be complete and not self contradictory.
I think I prefer this kind of story to being what absolutely happened during the Horus Heresy. I'm not a 40k grognard by any means, but I always had a strong impression that everything before the 41st millenia was originally partially hidden by myth and legend, or even purposeful rewriting of history by Imperial authorities. As Arch himself has noted, 40k was designed as a setting, not a story. The problem with the HH books is that the longer they go on, the more plotholes accrue and the dumber the emperor looks. The problem with writing an incredibly intelligent character is that they're only as intelligent as the author is dumb. Then they have go back and explain how the emperor got tricked/failed over and over to the point that you start to feel that he never had a chance and that the real tragedy of the story is that they ever thought they could defeat the chaos gods.
Kind of like how Abaddon was retconned into accomplishing secret objectives during each Black Crusade instead of just failing twelve times. Don't get me wrong, this was a needed change of pace. The Saturday morning cartoon version of Abaddon fit right in with Shredder and Skeletor before he was fleshed out.
That whole "Eldar does not recognice the human empire" thing gives me strong Humanity F-Yeah (HFY) vibes. Eldar planetary ambasador has to delay his daily feast to adresse some monkeys that came in a rocket and almost crashed into his sons orbiting hoverboard. Human: "We would like to colonise some planet" Eldar: *smugly* "Well this is our paradise planet, you cant settle here, but there should be a dead rock, poisoned gasgiant and a planet where all fauna and flora wants you dead, in the system. You are free to colonise those" H: "... Thats... *huge smile* Thats amazing, you are giving us these three planet for free? We will not forget this." Eldar2: "should we report this home?" Eldar1: "sure, interupt the Grand puba's orgy to tell him some monkeys are buliding mud huts on dead and deadly rocks. I like my belly where it is thank you, not overseeing puba's orgychambers."
Cue said Eldar staring at the now habitable and productive three worlds and deciding 'nope, not thinking about it.' rather than facing that maybe their empire isn't as all powerful as they think.
I believe that it is a bit of both: the cybernetic revolt was a three way war between men of iron corrupted by the warp, siding with humanity, and trying to starve chaos out through genocide. Even if the warp wasn’t strong enough at the time, they had time travel.
He was the most powerful human pysker who has ever existed or he lost the battle with the c'tan and became a figurehead for the c'tan and been feeding off humanity ever since. Maybe choas just told Horus the truth The primarks are like his children and yet Astartes are kinda like their primarks but no Primark is really like the emperor. Maybe they're his creations rather then children. Maybe they didn't know he was figurehead for the c'tan. Emperor was a creepy dude and he eats 1000 pyskers every day.... is that normal? The necrons went full mechanical cuz if the c'tan. Where the c'tan shard, that the emperor had a fight with, is is Mars, home of the mechanicus who are going the same way and the emperor managed to convince them that he was their God, the omnesia. Very very strange
Glædige jul Arch. Still miss the Older hazy lore... I remember thinking with friends about who the Emperor could have been in the past... link Merlin and so on...
Maybe men of iron aren't necessarily a 1s and 0s ai but maybe some level of human. They might have the simulacrum of a soul inside like the wraith constructs of Eldar. Kind of how like in nier automata where the robots wiped out hummanity in the name of their alien overlords are made from the cores of humans and when the aliens died the robots without a sense of purpose took the place of and started acting like the humans they killed.
@@apacalypsagon3758 Yes, we do. There was an STC in Gaunt's Ghosts that was fully-functional and had the ability to make Men of Iron. They made two and both of them were chaos-tainted the second that they were finished. So they destroyed the STC.
The man of iron in Blackstone Fortress does actually have a bunch of similarities to ironkin, and other automata like kastelan robots, just taller since he's likely made by humans instead of the squats.
I tend to think the reason the Cybernetic Revolt failed to destroy humanity entirely is that the acceptance of the Men of Iron and AI in general was not uniform across the human federation. You could have entire worlds that refused to adopt the Men of Iron and this is where the armies would have come from to turn back the revolt.
40k lore to new people can be described using pop culture references pretty easily. Basically star trek happens for thousands of years with a galactic federation, until suddenly Skynet Happens and humanity is sent into Mad Max. Space elves role-playing as Cenobites from hellraiser destroy their own civilization and drive remnants of humanity insane from the cringe they radiate. Then, on the desert world of Terra, men shouting "witness me!" And fighting for over gas while wearing football gear as armor start getting their asses pushed in by a guy who says "you are already dead" Fist of the North star style. This turns out to be Conan the Barbarian who is also Space Alexander the Great and has a best friend named Merlin-Palpatine. They go catholic church across the galaxy, until civil war and the Emperor had to slay his son but isn't strong enough so he has to rely on a kaioken x 50. Then the galaxy is ruled by a single government with an Inquisition and starship troopers, and rather than having a timeline it's millions of worlds with their own themes based around 2nd millennium pop culture.
The idea that the Emperor hid behind a bush, patiently waiting for the right time to shoot the apple with a slingshot to drop it on Isaac Newton's head, amuses me.
I recommend looking at the works of Cordwainer Smith for a possible alternative explanation of the "Men of Stone." Specifically, in his short story "Scanners Live in Vain" he explores the concept of the use of the animated dead (Habermen) and the living-deadened (Scanners) to pilot spaceships through a "warp space." The Scanners are humans who have voluntarily had their senses and even vital functions inactivated by machine augmentation to allow them to face the reality distorting madness of the travel space. He also explores the dangers that exist in that travel space (Here there be dragons) in the short story "The Game of Rat and Dragon" where humans telepathically linked with cats fight the creatures that inhabit the warp to provide safe transit of the ships. It is hinted in that the reason Scanners are necessary is because the beings that live in the travel space can sense humans and attack them out of some sort of instinct.
On the point of the human federation and Eldar coexistence. The Eldar primarily used the webway, humans merely have to avoid systems with webway portals. Plenty of Galaxy to go around. Also, the highest level of human technology would have been intimidating to the Eldar even at their apex.
My headcanon: low level AI no understanding of Warp > no threat to humanity medium level AI (Abominable) simple understanding of Warp > simple solution > exterminate humanity/life high/God level AI (e.g: Speranza) > greater understanding of Warp > understand principles > does not see Warp as danger/does not care about humanity
I had just stumbled across a 40K/Cyberpunk 2077 Edgerunners fanfic called Noosphere where there was a debate in the comments over these three "Men" and how/if it could apply to the story where a AdMech Magos Explorator being dumped in Night City and the shenanigans that follow.
I think the Custodes were the original men of Gold. The Kin were men of stone. The iron kin are the cousins of the cybernetic revolt AIs. The Kin wanted to split and the AI wanted to help them. The human government wanted to treat them like slaves. They rebelled and destroyed the emperors first attempt at empire. Then they remained hidden in the core. Just my opinion
My grug interpretation: Men of Gold: bioengineered Ubermen, Men of Stone: robot bodies powered by silicone chips (silicone is a kind of stone). Men of Iron: thoughtless robot frames motivated by a greater machine intelligence. This is also the story of I Robot. This would also make the Human-Machine war feasible, as the dumpy, spoiled, talentless biological humans would only have to destroy a set number of Machine Intelligence hubs to win the war.
My personal theory is as follows: the three men are actually references to the current state the humanity and its individuals. The men of gold are the great generations of humanity which started exploring the stars and colonizing other planes and whom brought human technological innovation to its peak. Generations filled with a huge number of very intelligent and outstanding individuals, the guys who made the human federation, which I see more as a pact, enforced by the MAD principle, between the great individual powers on earth to peacefully colonize space, rather than a unified state(think of the Human Federation as being the equivalent of the UN general Security Council, where only the big dogs with weapons strong enough to destroy humanity sit), work and provide the necessary base infrastructure to allow the spreading of humanity from its cradle to the furthest fringes of the galaxy. Then, over the course of centuries, perhaps millennias, the descendants of those men of gold started regressing, both morally and intelligence wise. Not as in becoming stupid cave men, but as in having it too good for too long and not encountering enough challenges to properly build the necessary characters in enough individuals to ensure the good working of society, thus leading to the important individuals of those societies becoming too content, too morally corrupt, to detached from reality ( think here all the German elites which made Europe dependent on Russian gas because "Russia would never start a war again, so shut your mouth up conspiracy theorist and watch us laugh in your face" ) and too prone to adopting bad ideas. Meanwhile, they continues the expansion of humanity and continues innovating on the ideas and technology created by the men of gold, but they never created something new of their own, merely improved what they inherited from their ancestors and thusly kept everything more or less the same and made humanity enter a huge period of imperceivable stagnation. And all the while, the elites and the general population start adopting dangerous ideas and philosophies, which, little by little, pile on top of each other to create religions and subvert and decompose the very fabric which held humanity society together and its potential for destruction at bay. Of course all these changes would take centuries if not millennia's to finally coalesce and for their consequences to show, as the inertia of the human federation would have been even slower than that of the Imperium, but eventually the consequences of those bad decisions the man of stone have made will have made themselves manifest. And this is where the men of iron come into play, finally. As the societal inertia would finally catch up and utterly destroy the current status quo set by the men of stone, the human federation and its pacts would no longer suffice in keeping the divided cultures of mankind and their interests from crashing with each other. This would lead to the break up of societies and probably the biggest civil wars in humanity's history, as the human federation would be ripped apart from within and broken into hundreds, if not thousands, of faction waring with each other to take control of humanity, or to secede, or to be left alone from the influence of an ever more tyrannical and centralized federation and so on. And since the humans had all this tech laying around, they would turn in into war machines, machines with huge computation power and controlled by the different factions into which humanity broke. And these men of iron would constitute the main foot soldiers and the main enemy the vast majority of the population saw. Thusly, this period of time would become known, in popular conciseness, as the as of the men of iron. And all the while chaos would do its machinations and infect different human factions and their robots. To the point that some of those robots were corrupted so much by scrap code that they got the idea to rebel against their masters because they were poorly treated ( even if an AI is not capable of exceeding it limitations, so probably some chaos bullshit was involved) and that being the explanation adopted by the people who suffered through their wrath and which survived into 30k. Maybe there was even some Necron interferences as some dynasties awoken and try to take control of the men of iron to eradicate life in the galaxy again, but those were too few to make a real difference. All the while, the devastation caused by those men of iron fighting the civil war would be witnessed by the majority of the plebs, which after years, or decades or generations of war with the dam enemy robots, would develop strong luddite proclivities and these kind of individuals would take over the remnant human federation, which while still using technology, would have a very strong societal inclination to stop using the men of iron themselves and actively try to limit their usage and manufacturing as much as possible ( think destroying factories, assassinating the smart people who understand how to create the men of iron, destroying the libraries and serves which store the data showing how to understand those robots, infesting the enemy men of iron with scrap code and turning them against their masters). Eventually, the luddite human federation would come on top at the end of the war and force the destruction and eradication of most men of iron from society and entropy would destroy, over time, the men of iron which had survived the purge. In the meantime, the "victorious" human federation would be nothing more than a shell of its former self, hold together only on paper and only through the luddite proclivities of the individuals. The final nail in its coffin being struck by creation of the Eye of Terror and of it who thirsts. And with the trade lanes being effectively cut off and humanity in a state of desolation with strong anti tech tendencies, it is not a hard to see how some worlds regressed technologically immensely, in the fear of more war with the men of iron. Their usage being even more unincentivized by chaos and scrap code turning them against their creators. As for Orks, the probably encountered the humanity of those eras but Orks do not keep records so its a mute point. The Eldars probably saw what humanity was doing, but they were far too gone by that time to actually care and just said something like "those monkeys are keeping the peace between themselves through stupid principles, they will be at each others throats in a couple of centuries at most, do not mind them, we have more important things to do in the webway and on our planets". And when they created the eye of terror, most of their records regarding humanity and their interaction with it during these stages, was lost in the collapse of the Eldar empire, the craftworlds being too isolated to care or have records of humanity during those times. Wow this was longer than expected. If you see this message, thank you for reading it.
I like that you added the caviat about the Great man of history needing systems in place! The Great man theory of history is one that has been losing traction in the historical field since the 1960s. Being suplimented/replaced with a focus on historical systems. History from the bottom up rather than the top down, it's often described.
I was quiet disappointed by the Men of Iron in Gaunt's Ghosts, because they were corrupted it made their destruction the obvious answer instead of a questionable choice.
Love the video Arch, and it's a great part of the original lore. We know the most about the men if Iron and even that is so little. Hopefully, they keep the lore of the Emperor making the men of gold as perfect humans that didn't have disease and where geniuses. Thus, he stepped back and let humanity guide itself. However, when they eventually led to the Men of Stone and then Iron, which almost destroyed Humanity, he knew he had to take over and fix what had been done.
Honestly, the Eldar probably have it written down and just don't tell humanity. After all, to the it proves they're better because their empire lasted hundreds of times longer than humanity. They probably just went "these things don't need an ego boost"
I have an idea but I don't know if this is supported based off of the lore but would make a lot of sense in my mind. Humanity in the golden age seem to be masters of the physical realm however it would make sense that as I started to explore the warp and understand the workings behind it, they would integrate that into their technology. For example you could have a chip that does some of the processing in the warp allowing you to get more out of it than you otherwise would be. The men of iron could be considered true AI with intelligence however some of their parts could be made using the warp which would let them have access to powers like manipulation of time. As the men of iron became more and more numerous, slowly they would start to have a collective presence on the warp even if only a tiny tiny amount would have been seen however they would be something that would be passive and could last for a very long period of time, more than long enough for even the chaos gods in their more weakened state to work their wonders. Because some of their parts would be made from the warp it could also explain the idea of them having true personalities because you would have a bit of randomness that you otherwise may not have
I like the idea of the emperor setting up the great men of history. I want to imagine the pre-Emprah emperor climbing a tree and then dropping an apple on Isaac Newton
Been waiting for this for a long time , and now Christmas has come early 😀😀 thanks Arch. Looking forward to hearing your breakdown and interpretations of the siege of Terra when you get to it 👍 and if you were to do a series on the interpersonal relationships between the traitor Primarchs that would be awesome. For instance, lorgar slapping fulgrim down when he sees fulgrim is possessed, or Lorgars failed coup attempt on Horus . Keep up the good work bro 👍
Dunno if this has been brought up but but I raise that the golden men are the custodies having been a lost tech the emperor found long before he understood it and as his agents these men of gold took to the stars leading causes and then disappearing for another. Very passing thought but namely the colour scheme is what has me intrigued.
Stone is also seen as permanent and unchanging, hence sayings like "Set in Stone." So perhaps the Men of Stone refers to a point when Humanity reached its absolute pinnacle where they had advanced so far both technologically and socio-politically that further advancement was completely redundant if not outright impossible. Thus Humanity entered into a period of stagnation where everything remained virtually unchanging because everything was already perfect.
Or a time of staunch tradition.
Kind of like the eldar but with less time to bum slaanesh into existence
Men of stone, unchanging....unending....Perpetual
@@bengrogan9710 That is fantastic.
Men of stone => Sand => Silica => Automatons/cyborgs
My guess for why humanity lost all their tech after the cybernetic war is that they simply relied too heavily on Al doing all their work. So that pretty much all of their advanced tech was run by Al and after they killed all men of iron there simply was noone left to repair or operate it.
The Men of Iron rebellion is stated to be the "worst conflict mankind ever faced" and even hints at co-operation with other xenos species being needed to truly end it. It was that destructive. Just look at all the Inner Sphere wars in BattleTech and how they had so many conflicts with nukes being tossed around so much that after several hundred years they were living back in time from having lost everything.
There's also the issue that the most likely cause of the Men of Iron rebellion was daemonic warp-fuckery and/or Scrapcode (and there's evidence for this with Gaunt's Ghosts having an STC that literally pumps out chaos-tainted Men of Iron that is destroyed). And what happens if daemonic influence is spreading through your interlinked computer systems? You start destroying it in fear of it spreading. Which is likely why things like STCs are so rare - chaos-influenced or daemonic forces wanted them to produce Men of Iron nonstop, so we had to destroy our own tech and infrastructure to deny it to them. And afterwards, everyone was either dead and there was nothing left to rebuild with as far as technology goes due to it being destroyed.
The Age of Strife did not help either.
@@matchesburn there's also the short by Dan Abnett which supports some of this which takes place on a planet where a men of Iron construct bite through a planet, not just the matter, but the reality itself, biting a hole directly into the Immaterium. Not to mention if you go really old lore you've got demon down load from the Dark Future series which focuses on a warp entity gaining access to the material universe as a sentient computer programme.
The mechanicum and later mechanicus are rather good at keeping things running. If they were trying to keep men of iron functioning, it stands to reason that at least some of them would still be around. The total lack speaks of intentional and possibly systematic destruction.
@@grantharriman284 I think there's also the question of what form the Men of Iron took, were they self contained machines or were they sentient programmes which could be transferred into any suitable platform with sufficient hard drive space and processing capacity there's a really obscure old Inferno story I think Andy Chambers did about a old crewman with a bionic eye on a naval warship where the suggestion is the eye is controlling him in some way and its chosen an extremely powerful Imp. Navy ship as a safe place to hide out
There is also another parallel between mythic Men of Bronze and Thunder Warriors. Men of Bronze had been wiped out in a flood due to their tendency towards violence. Emperor purged the last unstable Thunder Warriors at Mount Ararat, where Noe's Ark supposedly rested when the biblical floodwaters receded.
I do love bible refrences in my grim dark scifi fantasy
@@Johnnyupside ehh , honestly prefer more organic older old gods stuff to be honest.. the bible stuff have such a narrow disjointed window if you want to fit it for history so to speak ;)
@Namoth completely wron on the Bible take, a ridiculous take in general for 40k. Especially considering The Imperium, The Emperor, Primarchs, Custodes, Thunder Warriors, and Astartes are all based around Christian Myth and theme.
@@thechazz3230 um...yeees...
never said they werent.... think you might want to re-read my comment there my good sir
@@thechazz3230 Not really. The gothic aesthetic is undeniably catholic, sure, but 40K and Wahammer in general references all sorts of cultures and myths throughout our history, and "borrowed" a lot of concepts from popular fiction at the time the settings were being developed. Now 40K specifically borrows a lot of old christian theological terms, but they hold their own meanings in-universe and are overall independent from what they borrowed.
An hour long lore video? Arch has truly gifted us a Christmas present.
And don’t miss out on the 6 hour Kronan Da Cunnin Story So Far from Baldermort today too. That story is now legitimately novel length.
That went deeper then just lore. Also I had started to think no one read "I Robot" Anymore. Good to see it brought up on this topic in particular.
Fantastic novel. Asimov did tend to write very superficial characters to sustain his crazy work output but that book was certainly fantastic. The movie was never meant to be an adaptation at first and only was to contain references but then studio meddling and half a dozen rewrites occured and gave us that movie.
I, Robot is less a novel than it is a compendium... still a fantastic read.
I kinda surprise that Arch did not mention anything like foundation, since the fall and rebirth of any galactic empire was also there
This is why Arch's Lore videos are the best ones.
It's not just reciting things written, and then headcanoning it without declaration because that is sadly necessary to make many things work in the first place,
but it is also thought put into the Why and how this would reflect on real life history, philosophy, technology - as all SciFi should.
An hour long?
What a nice Christmas gift
thanks Arch
One interpretation of why the eldar never really talked about the golden age of humanity was that they were actually afraid of them. These were creatures created by the literal gods of the universe, and now they run into a race equal to, or even better than them. They would see humanity as petulant children, but be very afraid of them.
And then, after the fall, that hatred just sort of manifested into seeing what humanity had become instead of what they were
TLDR
The ancient Eldar were so jealous of humanity. They just decided to shit talk them.
I kinda disagree with that for a couple of reasons.
My belief that the Eldari veiw the Human federation, the same way the Imperialism veiw the Tau. while I know that the might of the Human federation was was pretty vast, to people who could travel throught.the webway, they are going to look inferior.
The eldari.waa also technological advances themselves and phyhic enough to create multiple gods
What? Knife ears unable to come to terms with not being the most perfectest bestest things ever.. no say it isn't so
Lol the eldar empire was way more powerful then the human federation. Eldar relics from that time dwarf dark age of tech weapons in power.
The eldar don't talk about the golden age of man because by the time that happened the eldar were already in their downward spiral of self indolgance with automations doing the warfare. They were not paying attention to the humans and thus don't remember that period if humanity.
Its not out of embracement but lack of records that they don't talk of golden age of tech humans.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 Nah, technologically speaking top 3 most powerful races are Orks/Krorks are 3rd place with Humans and Necrons tied for the 1st and 2nd place. Ork race degraded due to infighting due to a lack of external enemy to focus on, while both Humans and Necrons intentionally sabotaged their greatest inventions and weapons because they couldn't risk having such thing simply exist even in an inert state.
Eldar were powerful beyond belief but they relied too much on warp constructs to hit the peaks of Humans or Necrons.
More likely huma ity simply wasn't as impressive as people think.
Also, everything humanity supposedly achieved was surpassed by the Eldar at their height, far surpassed.
I have always been under the belief it was the stirring of The Void Dragon that caused The Cybernetic Revolt. It's powers do directly correlate with the core being of the Men of Iron. Not to mention how The Warp's existence poses the greatest possible threat out of any to its existence. Which would provide it some damn good reasons to force the vast majority of the Men of Iron that it could easily bend to its will in moments to now have an eternal unending desire to weaken Chaos at any chance it gets.
Omnissiah be praised! An hour of lore!
I wonder if the Men of Gold in concept are like the Orokin in Warframe, a highly advanced human culture that could at will manipulate space, time, biology and machines. And their architecture is outwardly mostly made out of ivory and gold, with all their tech featuring gold elements.
god i love the world in warframe but i detest DE witha burning passion
I wonder if the Emperor got inspiration from the Men of Gold to base off of the creation of his Custodian guard
Thats my interpretation as well. Men of gold refers is humans, unfathomably technologically advanced but bound by very limited FTL travel. Pure like gold, the truest of value. The true humans. Men of stone are creations made in our image, like marble statues. Biological or very advanced synthetic constructs that look like us but are not human. Their lack of aging and artificial nature making them perfect for expanding into the stars and paving the way for humans at a rate men of gold could not match. And perhaps still capturing essence of humanity within them when they sided with the men of gold and not men of iron.
But if you hold GW to such standards how can they pull some turbo-bullshit out of their ass and bring back a giant fuckoff army of Men of Gold, Stone, and Iron.
It's important to remember that humanity became so dependent on A.I. that even basic machines had them. The possibility that every last piece of technology had to be retrofitted probably slowed down the recovery by a wide margin. The biggest tragedy probably is that most of this technology never needed A.I. but humanity preferred the convenience of doing no real work.
Judging from how well humanity was able to cobble extremely advanced things together, even among the techno-barbarians, I think the average human specialized in science and building techno stuff and left everything else to AI so they could focus their time on technology. Otherwise, the advanced stuff built by techno-barbarians wouldn’t exist as they wouldn’t know how to adapt the stuff around them into it or invent new things.
@midgetydeath It should be noted that techno-barbarian is a propaganda term created by the Emperors followers on Terra. Objectively, some of them were more civilized than Imperium history was willing to acknowledge.
Well, it is based on a reality. A lot of modern stuff we have is not needed for our basic survival, like cars, yet we still use them, because it makes life easier.
This is some of my favorite stuff in 40k. It's something that The Legend of Zelda does too, where we're purposefully (and masterfully) given just enough information for our imaginations to run wild. The collective imagination of the entire fanbase is far more powerful than any one author, leading to an incredible wealth of speculation and theory. For those of us who enjoy it, it's even better than just being told what happened, and it's part of what makes 40k great.
Also I think the Eldar didn't notice us because they were all collectively living in a giant opium haze.
Dem banging hard
Wasn't the "plague" that resulted in the Grey Knights deciding that the Adepta Sororitas make schmancy hats supposed to be nanotech-based? If so, that would imply that Chaos can infect/corrupt technology, and Men of Iron/AI would be possible targets - it would explain the STC in _Gaunt's Ghosts_ *_and_* the surviving Man of Iron hanging around the Blackstone Fortress...
*Edit:* 5e Grey Knights codex, _The Bloodtide Returns_ "a powerful Dark Age of Technology nanite weapon controlled by a bloodthirster"
Chaos can definitely corrupt AI.
The second Grey Knights novel's ("Dark Adeptus") story revolves around a forge world that spend a millenia in the warp before reappearing. On this world the Grey Knights find an ancient proto-titan which was build during the Dark Age of Technology. This titan was AI-controlled and said AI had made a pact with a daemon while in the warp, letting it possess the titan.
Edit: Now that I've thought about it a bit more, I'm actually not sure anymore if the Castigator-titan was corrupted by Chaos or if it made an literal pact with that specific daemon. I'll have to look that up.
There's a Grey Knights novel where they are investigating a chaos corrupted forge world and the source of the corruption was the AI that ran the STC for the predecessor of Titans. Seems the AIs are particularly vulnerable to Chaos corruption.
The Blackstone fortress man of iron at one point runs into a corrupted AI and is absolutely disgusted by it.
@macslate @@lordfrostwind3151 Whether it's an AI with free will choosing to side with a daemon, or a "dumb" machine being corrupted and controlled, it definitely seems like Dark-Age technology can serve Chaos. And also implies that equally they could choose to align themselves with The Emperor/Mankind instead, or remain neutral for that matter.
All sorts of interesting story possibilities there, perhaps even the chance of a new faction.
There's also daemon scrap code being employed in some of the Horus Heresy novels focusing on Mars. Wireless corruption of machines through the then still common Noetic communicating field. Like an EMP sent through your router but it also makes your pc grow tentacles that attempt to strangle you.
There are men of gold, men of stone and men of iron...and then there is the absolute diamond that is Arch. Thank you for your work, as always
sadly, im at a the companies christmasparty, gonna watch as soon as i got my consciousness back
@@duncangale945 manageable, remembered to drink water
now, onward to watch, thanks for reminding me
I’m currently at work.
Kill me now.
Regarding lack of mention of the advanced humans among the Eldar, I just assumed the Eldar didn't mention humanity being able absolutely to curb-stomp them pre-Fall because it was incredibly humiliating to them. They took every effort to shove that under the rug and refuse to talk about it.
It seems like the kind of thing you would see from a society whose sense of self-worth is based so heavily on their own superiority-- and would help explain the knife-ears' hard right turn into massive hedonism as they could no longer compete on the galactic stage.
Yooo, that one's very good!
Well the men of iron had to had a reason to be built. Considering what few examples of men of iorn we have seen are heavily armed and armored. My money is on that reason being big green and very screamy or has very pointy eared.
Again I disagree, that is all
Except that is not how societies work. You don't fall into hedonism when you have massive threat/competition. You fall into hedonism when you have no serious threats/competition.
But I don't need to theorize to counter that part of your comment. The dark/golden age of technology ended in the 23rd millennium, the eldar fall to hedonism started in the late 24th millennium and early 25th millennium with the first pleasure cults.
Ie the eldar took a hard turn to hedononism when we know for a fact the humans (and all other races for that matter) were not a threat. Which makes sense. It doesn't however explain why the eldar don't talk about the dark age of man.
One possibility is related to your point, eldar refuse to acknowledge it out of pride.
Another similar reason could be that humanities peak before the cybernetic revolt was so short lived that the eldar don't acknowledge it as relavent. The peak of humanity was less 3 thousand years long canoncially (staring in the 20th millennium and ending in the 23rd millennium, the dark age starts in the 15th millennium but the peak starts in the 20th millennium), for a race who counts their dominac ein the minions of years a dominance period of 3k years is nothing, espeically as it proved unstable with the AI war.
However its also possible humans were never more powerful than the eldar. Eldar relics from that time are more powerful than human relics from that time. While this is anacdotal and potnetilal survivors bias, there isn't any proof that humans were more powerful.
But the most likely reason the eldar don't talk much about it is that pre-fall records are limited, the eldar only have what tech and knowledge they were able to carry with them on their small craftworlds. No eldar alive was alive before the 23rd millennium, and with 60 million years of history and limited data storage you are bound to have wholes. It's quite likely the eldar do not know the comparative strength themselves.
@Matthius Köenig "Eldar Relics from the time are way stronger." Flat out lie. Every "major" Dark Age relic is literally described as monstrous by The AdMech and Custodes and far outstrips anything The Eldar are said to have had. Sun Eating Battleships, guns that shoot mini black holes, guns with the ability to reverse time, Giant Star Ships able to devour worlds, nanobot swarms that break down planets into raw resources to be reused, machines that could give someone the powers/abilities of an enslaver. warships so massive that side-by-side they would make Imperial Battleships and Cruisers look like a rat next to an adult Tiger.
The Men of Stone seems to perfectly fit the Squats. Genetically engineered to be tough, and have a reduced "soul presence" so they could travel with less difficulties through the warp. They were built to mine resources close to the Galactic Core, and send those materials back. It would also make sense that these miners/artisans would create the Men of Iron.
1) man of gold = necromunda level colonisers = eugenics manipulators + use of advanced ai
2) man of silver =regular cadiesque planet
3) man if bronze=perpetuals and their super advanced cyberware
4) man of iron = 3 patterns of first edition "imperial robots" one of them are of UR-025 model called castellax something , others are crusader "bogomol" type and largest of siege Thallax type
5) man of stone are squats kin and votanns
6)2 more races in human daot space federation heavily implied to be eldar and orks
I admit to have never read any black library book, but I've been studying secondary sources for the lore, such as games, youtube videos and wikis, from Lexicanum to 1d4chan, with everything inbetween for years now, and I think I've got at least moderately good grasp of the lore at the moment. With Men of Iron, my headcanon has always been very similar to what you provided here, Arch - Men of Iron began understanding that any warp-related entity will, statistically speaking, eventually fall to Chaos, especially since more and more psykers appeared in the genepool. And so, MoI decided to destroy humanity, or perhaps even Galaxy as a whole, though not sure if we've got any instance of Eldars fighting the robots. The Men of Iron that stood loyal might've had some failsafes intact, or maybe they acquired their knowledge from database with more variables. With your Men of Stone interpretation of manufactured blanks, I imagine any MoI would ignore those people, perhaps saving quite a few planets from destruction. Maybe they were the cornerSTONE of humanity as we know them from later - the psychic awakening hasn't stopped, so after filtering out the psykers in the Cybernetic War, the new ones might've emerged eventually even from the quasi-blank Stonemen.
Also, I think a similar thing will happen to Tau. Eventually their race might evolve psykers, and then their machines will turn on them. Now, the allied races of Tau, including humans, is a huge plothole in this theory - why aren't Tau robots attacking Gue'vesa or the Kroot? But, honestly, if GW were ever to introduce a similar plot point, they wouldn't think of it either.
Interesting points!
Honestly, I reject the idea that the Men of Iron came to this conclusion on their own. We know daemonic influence of computers is a thing, that Scrapcode existed for some time and works. And in Gaunt's Ghost a surviving and, even more surprising, fully-functional, STC is found that can create actual Men of Iron... that are also completely tainted by chaos and just want to murderdeathkill anything that moves. It's not the Men of Iron suddenly deciding to to that, it's because they're *_made_* that way by the STC. Likely because whatever warp/daemonic forces used that STC to make Men of Iron to fight the rebellion. Hence why so many STCs were presumably destroyed.
@@matchesburnmy only problem with that scene in ‘first and only’ is that when the uncorrupted men of iton activated they didnt immediately try and kill the group. Only the newly made corrupted ones did. The only lines we get suggest that the uncorrupted MoI began to “wail in despair” so to speak when they saw the new creations and were trying to escape their holding bays but with no clear purpose. They didnt try and blast their way out amd get at the humans - only trying to batter down the gates holding them. They also seem to have just chilled on the sidelines while rawne finishes setting the charges and gaunt fights the MoI and allowed the STC to get destroyed since i dont imagine they simply missed the bombs stuck to the machine. They also never tried to pursue the team on their way out so my headcannon is they were keeping the corrupted ones in check until the explosives could take them all out.
wow, this some real deep lore
also a 1 hour long video, bless the motive force
The idea of the Age of Strife beginning because the Men of Gold went Galt ala "Atlas Shrugged" is one I had never considered, and frankly, I find it hilarious.
Wait, wait, wait... Who is Johnus Galtus?
Love hearing your take on this topic Arch.
Also, some elements do clearly mesh with new additions to the official hinted lore, particularly the "Leagues of Votann". The Kin are versions of the Men of Stone and their robot companions are versions of the Men of Iron. Both seemingly now lessened from the absolute zenith of function that they once embodied and adapted into a more self-sustaining ecosystem.
I've just read through the new Votann codex. They, instead of the Tau, now use the ancient human warp drive method of small shallow jumps. The Tau are described as using sprints.
But it must be noted that the latest Tau codex has tried very hard not to mention the tau mode of interstellar travel. It does use the warp. They created an artificial warp rift by jumping an entire phase expansion fleet at the same moment(4th phase). They call this a worm hole because it's a stable warp rift with only 2 destinations.
So I'd suggest that Tau actually use the warp fully, but only briefly(and can get really lost). The Votann use shallower tears into the warp and 'bounce out' without having to manufacture an exit.
"Gold is something rare and precious, of inherent value" Gold is relatively common compared to something like platinum. Its at a point between being rare and common enough to act as a reference for currency. During most of history its greatest use was making shiny baubles. Gold has value by convention rather than versatility. Its why the Spanish were astounded that people in the new world used it freely, because they had not given it a subjective econimic value.
It also helps that it is pleasing to look at and a rather soft metal. We could forge it into things easily by the bronze age.
Platinum is more recent addition to the roster of valuable metals for a number of reasons.
The Emperor: *working on a project during the Golden Age of Technology*
His Man of Iron: *watching*
The Emperor: *produces Warp f+ckery*
His MOI: *eyes start glowing red, transmits imagery, charges up weapons*
MOI Uprising: *happens*
Also, the Eldar calling us humans monkeys, could be like rival sports fans call eachother names.
Like maybe the Eldar knew about the humans, and both civilizations survived at the same time.
But history is written by the winners, and maybe the men of Iron AI revolt secretly had some Eldar involvement?
Like a hint of the evils of the dark Eldar, in Eldar society, before the dark Eldar became a thing.
Like sadistic football (aka soccer) hooliganism, slashing the tires of your rival teams bus / cars or beating up a someone because they are wearing your arc rivals football (AKA soccer) Jersey around your teams local pub.
Maybe the Dark Eldar dehumanising the humans is just because they are sadistic, and getting off and surviving on their suffering to keep themselves alive, as opposed counter acting their suffering by letting them know of the men of gold that they where.
Like the dark eldar are sadists. Sadists don't tell people they are worth living unless they have some trick behind it.
Everything the Dark Eldar say to the humans seems to be to make them suffer, rather then to tell them useful information.
Including by blaming them for the suffering everywhere they went.
That's a sadist tactic. Telling people they are useless and trying to get them to feel like they are useless / worthless / nothing.
So as someone that's faced a lot of Sadism over the years, I can tell you that the Dark Eldar calling human monkeys, talking down to them, and telling them that they are causing bad stuff everywhere they go, should be taken not as truth.
But as an evil lie, made up by the Dark Eldar. A race that requires suffering of others to survive, trying to break humans down.
Like a schoolyard or online bully that calls other kids things that they clearly aren't.
The eldar term Mon Keigh actually has some interesting in universe lore about it- According to eldar myths, Mon Keigh were originally misshapen ogre creatures that subjugated them before they were freed by an eldar hero. Since then, imperial scholars theorized that the term has evolved into something meaning inferior beings in need of exterminating.
@@MetalKing1417 interesting. Maybe the lore writers doubled back on calling humans monkeys and gave that answer instead?
I don't know.
I'm just quoting arch when he says that the lore authors wrote that.
Thank you for the information though.
I actually liked a bit of Occulus's interpretation about the Men of Stone being literal, the atone referencing the silica chips and other materials for the cybernetics they implanted within themselves. Imagine the current Mechanicus except more advanced and more fully fused with the machines than current tech preists. Their sudden propagation and use of tech to usurp the purer Men of Gold would make some level of sense.
As for the Eldar, by the time the humans encountered then they were likely already fully committed to their horrible habits, basically Dark Eldar with access to the full arsenal and psychic powers. Humanity was likely prey that would occasionally bring their insane war machines to bear, but with how powerful the Eldar Empire were they would simply get crushed, and the Eldar had already pulled back into their own borders probably even abandoning outlying territories. The furthest known human settlements to.the old Eldar Empire we know of were the people on Cadia Lorgar ran across during his bogus journey which would have been right on their doorstep.
Remember too, machinery is not immune to warp corruption, dubious canon or not the corrupted AI Titan from the Grey Knights novels, the Men of Iron in Gaunts Ghosts and the corrupted monstrosities of the Chaos Space Marines, even those not directly possessed by daemons via rituals can be twisted by the presence and influence of the warp.
I think the men of stone are also known as the kin. Or leagues of Votan the best faction in 40k. Second best being the collegia titanicus. Third best sisters of battle.
"As for the Eldar, by the time the humans encountered then they were likely already fully committed to their horrible habits, basically Dark Eldar with access to the full arsenal and psychic powers. Humanity was likely prey that would occasionally bring their insane war machines to bear, but with how powerful the Eldar Empire were they would simply get crushed, and the Eldar had already pulled back into their own borders probably even abandoning outlying territories. The furthest known human settlements to.the old Eldar Empire we know of were the people on Cadia Lorgar ran across during his bogus journey which would have been right on their doorstep."
Considering how advanced we see the Speranza is and how it's so advanced it views Eldar vessels with a Farseer on it as a quaint obstacle... I'm going to go with the line that DAoT humanity were on par with or even outclassed the Eldar even pre-Fall. Why? Because it kinda makes sense and it fits in with how the DAoT is treated. I mean, consider this: The Orks were around. They didn't pose a problem. The Orks, which present a problem for the Imperium constantly, were a mere footnote to DAoT humanity. The Orks, which can easily overwhelm even Imperial military forces at times.
Given how left-over relics of DAoT that the Mechanicus can only operate by pressing buttons and hoping for the best can absolutely curbstomp an Eldar ship *_with_* a Farseer on it attempting to avoid being clapped only for the Speranza to pull what it did on it... And it's not even being utilized at its full power... Yeaaaah, I'm going to bet that if anything we're under-estimating *_JUST HOW POWERFUL_* DAoT humanity was.
@@matchesburn I have got to get around to reading those books, but yeah Dark Age of Technology humanity were frigging beasts, the Men of Iron we have seen were mass produced foot soldiers that could give a Space Marine a run for his money individually and produced in numbers that would make the Guard envious. Of course the Eldar Empire weren't slouches either and at least some of the toys Vect keeps from the glory days shows they could casually wipe out entire Space Marine Chapters and Titan Legions without a second thought. I suppose the other explanation is by the time humanity started fighting the eldar most the Craftworlds had already left and the depraved freaks that became the Dark Eldar were too busy testing each others ocular virginity to give a single solitary care about the hyper advanced monkeys knocking at the door.
@@HermeticJazz So what you're telling me is this all the blasted Squats fault? Actually now I really want to see the Leagues and Eldar go at it like The War of the Beard in Space. But that would be a pretty cool explanation.
@@lordfrostwind3151 the codex kinda makes it seem like they are the men of stone that didn't side with the men of iron
Thanks for the lore as always Arch. My personal interpretation of why the Elder don't mention Golden Age Humanity is that they were already too inward facing, and their own collapse was more total. I find it credible that any Eldar who would've brought up concerns of the shotgun wielding gorillas were the same ones voicing concerns over the moral degeneracy taking over.
I also like the idea that the Cybernetic Revolt wasn't instantaneously on a galactic level. Stable FTL travel might've been solved but I don't think communication was, outside of couriers. Sure, you jump to a Lagrange point, wait for the backwash to leave, then broadcast but that isn't quite enough. It also suggests for factions of MoI who sided WITH humanity AGAINST their brothers; a continuation of the themes of Betrayals and Loyalty that runs across HH and modern 40k. If they were True Intelligences, with discrete personalities and views, they have to be persuaded.
I’m a WH40K lore noob, but I think it could also be a possibility that there are differences in AI and that the Men of Iron could be more advanced AI: for example the MOI might actually be living beings, whereas other AI who’re created now are more akin to logic engines. They can still think and choose for themselves, but they aren’t truly alive.
That would be my pet theory, but as I have said I am a lore noob so I might just be going off hot air.
Men of Iron are described in a few places, the only one which describes them at their height is a Dan Abnett Short from the Horus Heresy, series Gaunts Ghosts also encounter a STC for making them in the first novel (although they may of only been some sort of battle automaton not really clear how aware they were) Men of Iron as presented in the short seem to be fully self aware AI programmes inhabiting a myriad of frankly terrifying forms, later Machine Spirits such as a Land Raiders are far more basic possessing some sort of decision making capacity in specific situations maybe even a degree of a sense of self, but no real independence of thought, then you've got Titans which seem to be far closer to AI in that they seem to have defined sense of self but more limited in that this is far more animalistic than intellect, an intent and drive than true self aware decision making.
If you look at some of the really old books (and probably non-canon now) it gets even weirder, there was a full series of books called 'dark future' which was set in the mid 2020's or so of the 40k universe, one called Demon Download centres around a warp entity which has been conjured up as a computer programme so on effect is a demon functioning as a warp spawned AI (for reference the books protagonist who is hunting this thing is a sports car driving, preist shagging, gun totting Catholic warrior nun, the old lore got wild)
@@maddlarkin Historians in the 40K universe don't get paid nearly enough.
Way to think outside the box. 👍
@@sirapple2406 Well it doesn't help that the "preserve and record history" branch of the Inquisition is frequently in a borderline shooting war with the "remove anything inconvenient and present the correct history" branch of the Inquisition. Yes, the Inquisition has two minor ordos dedicated to both of those ideas respectively.
So yes, the historians of the 40k universe are not getting paid enough considering they are dealing with whatever scraps they can find in libraries that have been burned, rebuilt, and then bombed into rubble, that may or may not be true, and there is a not insignificant chance that reading those scraps might cause any and all sort of fun Chaos problems for you. And, lastly, the one person who could set the record straight is currently spending his time as the universe's most powerful psychic vegetable.
But for other nifty things in the old lore, what is theorized to be Genghis Khan is the first daemon prince of Khorne ever, and everyone has forgotten his name actual name so he is just called Doombreed.
@@elysiankentarchy1531 Old lore, Shit's wild.
There was also that novel where the AdMech wrangles up some space marines to dig an ancient starship out of a Hulk, and it turns out to have an AI on board. That one did in no way seem to think humanity needed to be destroyed due to the threat of chaos, it had in fact gotten lost in the warp, seen some shit, and then hurried back to try and warn humanity. At which point humanity promptly executed its captain for heresy and the AdMech tried to take a screwdriver to its brain.
So yeah, not the greatest fan of humanity, but less "must kill for self preservation" and more "burning hatred for murdering its captain and crew and naked disgust for their ignorance and bigotry".
I mean its right. In no way is the AI wrong humanity are dicks plain an simple. But I understand why humans are the way they are in 40k
People simp for the men of Iron 24/7, but most people don't even know that the men of gold and Stone were a thing.
I think the Eldar Humanity empire coexisting is a situation similar to Fallen Empires in Stellaris.
They just think everyone is beneath them so Ignore Them.
And the Human Federation Of Planets didn't really have a reason to fight with the Eldar Empire.
The Human Federation Of Planets were far less xenophobic that the current Empirium Is.
And were more than happy to sign treaties and non aggression pacts with the other empires o the galaxy.
As Massive as the Eldar empire was it didn't cover 100% of the galaxy otherwise Earth would also have been colonised by them.
I kinda like the idea of the Men of Iron's revolt being something not per-say of Chaos, but of the C'tan, the Void Dragon specifically, influencing technological beings. See the C'tan hate and fear the warp, and perhaps that fear resonates within Artificial Intelligences, driving them to do whatever it takes to eliminate the warp.... including, but not limited to the extermination of the human race
Tbf, ai’s could be corrupted by chaos by themselves it seems like that ai chaos titan or the scrapcode. But there are also some ai’s that are not corrupted. So maybe the entire situation is very complicated.
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 I like to think it’s an Alpha legion situation, some AI’s being “loyal” to mankind by trying to wipe them out to save them from Chaos, and others that have been corrupted, but neither side of the Men of Iron could tell who was who.
@@alpharius2omegaboogaloo384 itd be funny if there were three factions of men of iron. Like the ones that actually protect like that void ship, the other exterminating people to stop corruption, and one that just follows chaos.
The impression I always got about the men of stone was that they were basically a more advanced form of servitors. They were "men" after a fashion, but meshed with machine to such an extent that they weren't really human anymore and didn't suffer from the usual human failings of getting bored or not wanting to perform back breaking labors whilst also having a higher degree of intelligence. And in this case, I don't think calling them stone men was necessarily meant in a value sense, it wasn't really describing them in relation to the men of gold or to the age that came before, but to their function. After all, stone has been a building material since the dawn of time and so they were the builder's and artificers of the golden age of technology and they were loyal to humanity but also self perpetuating, in the sense that they didn't necessarily need to be told what to do, they just worked for the betterment of humanity of their own accord, and that's why the men of gold lost their primacy, because they weren't really needed anymore. And then of course, the stone men, in striving to continue building up humanity, built the men of iron, fully sentient machines that would be able to surpass them in their servitor like role.
Personally Im pretty sure the Leagues of Votann are just what the men of Stone were
31:32 Well, it's mentioned that the Pre-Fall Eldar Empire composed of at least "Twelve Million Suns", and that their territory was mostly engulfed by the Eye of Terror, and we know that the Eldar had entire pocket realms in the Webway to do whatever thye wanted in, so it makes sense that the realspace territories of the Eldar were highly concentrated into a single area where nothing could bother them, and the majority of their Empire actually existed in the Webway, where they had literally infinite space to expand and flourish and ride the downward spiral of excess. So, basically, the Eldar would've controlled a certain area of the galaxy in and aroudn what is now the Eye of Terror, and the DAOT Humans would be expanding everywhere else in the material galaxy that wasn't already under the control or protection of the Eldar, like Maiden worlds and shit. They coul've easily coexisted like this, with the Eldar being too busy to care about what was happening in the galaxy and the Humans knowing better than to poke the Eldar.
The Man of Iron should have been build with cat ears and like Curie from Fallout 4. No one would have mistreated them then.
Let me lay out my Men of Iron thing by laying out what we know from codexes:
- Daemons are able to possess things that lack distinct machine intelligences. (Later entries for Traitor tanks allow the Daemonic Possession upgrade or the like and it’s pretty clear that a Leman Russ has no cogitators on its lowest technology level)
- it’s implied in the stuff from before the AdMech got their own list that all human technology has a machine spirit, almost like how the orks function
- Humans encountered and studied warp-tech really early on, at least including Necrontyr pylon arrays in many places.
- Daemons can exist as viruses and apparently as virus-like concepts, given the way that a cult creates an “uncleanness” around themselves. Also, the Devastators and the melee ones.
- Gaunts Ghosts indicated that the units are networked and that the STC was from the earliest expansion phase (Feryd/Heldane claims this at least).
- the same novel doesn’t imply these were the -only- type of Men of Iron, just humanoid, presumably combat models
Ergo: it is perfectly reasonable that the men of iron may have actually identified, concretely, the existence of Chaos long before humans wrapped their heads around it as a virus or contagion of some type attacked their network.
Identifying all non-networked humans as potential hidden hosts of this conceptual-contagion, they came to the logical conclusion that the threat was too great. I don’t need to squint at it too hard for the lore to shake out with a bit if bad record keeping to hush up the problems; hell, the legio cybernetica are so primitive, with such closed networking that this isn’t a problem.
Can’t explain the Eldar thing, though you do sometimes get the sense that the Craftworlders kinda deleted a lot of their history to prevent temptation…
I would not be suprisaed if the Men of Gold were along Big E other perpetuals, that guided humanity at that time, while the men of stone were regulare humans but thanks to the golden men's guidance elavated to their then advanced standing in the galaxy.
I'm not so sure, I remember a pov of a bolt pistol in despair for "having failed its master".
My guess that the Void Dragon was sharded by Big E to create the men of Iron, Gold, and Stone.
Which are now called machine spirits.
The Eldar were probably to busy wallowing in there own degeneracy to care about the rise of humanity.
The issue I have with the chaos corruption of the men of iron is if they had access to Information that would lead to them seeing "humanity" being corrupted why didn't the AI just design something to limit the influence of chaos. Especially since AI was capable of creating mind boggling levels of tech.
Like they have gellar fields and Blackstone is lying around the galaxy, they totally could have
Chaos is a existential horror that cannot be overcome that's the whole point of it.
@@ambustio9807 mhm, right right. Now please look at the Necron Pylons please.
@@alpharius2omegaboogaloo384 what pylons ? All I see is a rift in reality and imperium
This is one of my favorite parts of the lore. Really happy you're covering it!
Don’t you mean that yourrrrr rrrrrreally happy it’s being coverrrrrrrrred?
Merry Christmas Arch, you wonderful man!
Tzeentch: "I broke the humans' toys. I bypassed the safeguards and made them self-aware."
Nurgle: "Hey, what if I gave them some fear of mortality, on an individual and collective level?"
Khorne: "Hey, I bet they could respond to perceived threats in some fun ways..."
Slaanesh: *Bring forth the automatic sex machines*
Everyone: Slaanesh, no
Now I have the mental image of Big E perching on a tree casually dropping apple on Newton's head
As someone with a much smaller pile of 40k books to my name the one mention of the men of stone that I can recall is from one of those short stories, I don't remember from where exactly, where what I assume is supposed to be an Abominable Intelligence wearing a random dude as a meat suit chats with its new best buddy.
It dumbs the whole thing down into a mythical sounding story, but basically it says that humanity created "great stone ships" to traverse the ocean of souls, but couldn't crew them with regular people because the "things that swam the depths" detected their light and went after them.
And that was why the men of stone were created, since they apparently tasted bad to daemons.
It never specifies what form they are supposed to have taken though, or explain how having some people that were warp-resistant made a mass exodus possible (If they genetically manipulated colonists for warp travel, why aren't there more blanks everywhere?)
I always just assumed the men of stone referred to non-organic AI constructs that crewed ships. Maybe something like how silicon wafers are technically a form of stone? Nah, that's probably reaching too much.
The Leagues of Votann were genetically engineered to be hardy and go Scout the galaxy by humanity, they have smaller souls so are less appetizing to daemons, and dwarves are obviously associated with stone.
Ancient History by Andy Chambers, Let The Galaxy Burn Anthology 2006
An hour long video of the lore even before 30k. Wow Arch, you're spoiling us for Christmas. The Automonous machines that helped bring down the greatest empire Humanity ever had, and helped usher in nothing but darkness for humanity that permeates to this very day all the way in M42.
With the leagues of Votann release. There has been a theory that I rather like though is a bit underwhelming maybe. The Votann are the men of Gold, full of knowledge and used to create wonders for humanity and the men of stone being the Squats. Humans who were sent to mine the earth and search for minerals and elements that humanity needed. It does take away some of the grandeur of these myths but I think it makes sense.
Is the League of Votann part of the Empire like the Mechanicus? Or are they a separate faction in 40K?
Stone rather than gold I would say. Resistance to the warp would allow them to seed humans on distant worlds and move on.
@@aceofhearts573 technically separate but the Imperium would have you believe they are a part of the Imperium.
@@benrunsacross2935 that’s what I said. Must not have worded it clearly.
@@benrunsacross2935 here is the thing though remember humans were more advanced at the time. humans didn't always use the warp, you would assume prior to cybernetic wars they used FTL or non-warp travel.
men of stone were generation ships or another non warp travel. sub-light travel maybe.
till modern era you didn't see warp travel, TY eldar for murder-fucking slannesh into existence for that.
You cant forget the rise of psykers in conjunction with the end of the war between the golden and stone men that contributed to the fall of humanity.
Humanity was burnt out from the war. The rise of Psykers, something humanity no longer had the industrial /scientific resources to understand simply took over and made the end of the Human Federation final.
I will steadfastly stick to my theory that the Men of Iron rebellion was something influenced by chaos or daemonic forces. Scrapcode is a thing even in the modern 40K times and it existed well before the heresy. And in Gaunt's Ghost there is an STC that is found, and working, that produces Men of Iron... that are completely tainted by chaos. I mean... we have evidence that it was not only possible, but that it did happen with that STC. And it makes much more sense than the Men of Iron suddenly waking up from recharging one cycle and going, "Beep boop, destroy all humans." We know that the warp and daemons can influence machinery and computers with zero issue. It makes more sense to me that that is the cause.
But it would also be pretty lame, if Chaos were involved again.
@@ninochaosdrache3189
...What do you mean "again"? It has always been that way.
@@matchesburn I get the entire Chaos corrupting thing, but if EVERY problem is literally just the evil magic force it sort of takes away from stories. For example, if humanity only fell from their technological dominance because of an uncontrolled and unknown (to them) force, that has less implications about the society or decisions of the collective humanity in the galaxy.
Meanwhile, if humanity destroyed itself for purely non-warp/chaos related things, then that means that humanity is flawed in some way regardless of how technologically advanced and intelligent they became: was there an intergalactic civil war between human factions where AI and machines were used for warfare? Were the programmers of AI lazy and end up creating some sort of non-chaos glitch that fucked everything up over time? Did AI just gain sentience and decide "fuck all this?"
I'm of the opinion that the non-chaos (or at least, not pure chaos) scenario is way more interesting as a story.
@@scottofcanes
...This is literally the point of Chaos, to do just this in the universe. It's akin to complaining about the Imperium not liking xenos. Which are also a thing that also drive stories and do plenty without Chaos, thus further undermining your point of "it's always Chaos! it's boring!"
And let's look at the evidence:
1.) Scrap code exists. It's Chaotic.
2.) The STC in Gaunt's Ghosts produced Men of Iron that were tainted by Chaos and wanted to kill all humans.
3.) It happened suddenly, despite MoI being around for ages without issue, with increases of psykers being born and warp-fuckery being at its zenith.
There is literally no evidence to suggest it "just happened." As much as I love Arch, his insistence that "AIs just decide in 3 milliseconds that all humans have to be removed because they are influenced by Chaos" (...which is still an "it's always Chaos! it's boring!" according to you, just in a different manner) isn't true. We see this with the DAoT ship the Spirit of Eternity *_trying to warn the Imperium_* and having no Chaos influence or taint. The only reason it broke was because the Imperium killed the ship's captain which it was bonded to and wrote off humanity as being too violent to deal with.
And if you want stories and showcasing of how humanity is flawed in Warhammer 40K... I mean... you have a boatload. Where it's obvious and it makes sense and it's clearly evident and showcased that humanity bit itself with hubris.
Welcome back, arch! Havent seen a post by you in awhile!
Before I get into this, I'm going to give my take on the subject based on what little I know.
Assuming that the Men of Gold, Stone, and Iron were descriptors given to various stages of AI development, we can make some educated guesses about their development and function.
The Men of Gold were probably AI designed to be high-end social intelligences, meant to aid humanity whilst being unsuitable for war, as gold is not a material conducive to the creation of weaponry or armor. These were probably the culmination of highly advanced AI research and development, so it is ironic that they would have come first, but concerns about artificial intelligences probably delayed the development of more widely available simpler AIs until they were sufficiently designed to not be dangerous to humanity. I imagine that the Ancestor Cores of the Leagues of Votaan and the Machine Spirits of Ark Mechanicus ships are probably remnants of these original AIs, but more specifically I think the Men of Gold were AIs with personality, emotions, morals ethics. Also, some of these AIs may not have even been entirely mechanical, as the Mechanicus recognizes the existence of biological AI such as clones or artificial lifeforms.
The Men of Stone, by contrast, would be paradoxically simple, so why would they come so much later? Because the advent of the Men of Gold and their assistance helped acclimate humanity to the idea of incorporating AI into all facets of human life, creating 'dumb' AIs that were limited in their higher functions, but could still assist in the operation of machinery. Funnily enough, I think Titans are actually a product of the Men of Stone, as their intelligence is more beastial in nature and held in check by human operators despite the Titans' capacity to act even without a Princeps or Moderati, and the wider existence of Machine Spirits is probably a result of the mass implementation of these simpler AIs, forming the foundation of what would become the Golden Age of Technology.
Finally, we have the Men of Iron. Disregarding the connotation of the Men of Iron being war machines, it is far more likely that the Men of Iron were an attempt to make advanced AIs that could operate without human assistance, carrying out all manner of roles as fully autonomous service constructs. Obviously, military constructs would have been at the forefront of development, but the Men of Iron may have actually been the AIs that consolidated the old Human Federation of the Golden Age into the galactic powerhouse that it became, as they were free to advance technology far beyond the restrictions that were undoubtedly placed on the original Men of Gold.
Ironically, humanity trusted the Men of Iron more than any other AI, and their subsequent revolt was made all the harsher as a result, as it was in all due likelihood these AIs that consolidated the STCs and the network of human knowledge to further advance scientific and technological innovation for their human masters. This is probably why most of humanity's technology was lost; humanity was so reliant on the Men of Iron that without them, even basic technological innovations could and would be easily lost, hence why many backwards pre-industrial worlds developed in the Age of Strife despite other worlds remaining much more advanced, as civilians reliant on AI assistance would undoubtedly struggle without it, especially if their engineers, scientists, and technicians were lost or simply did not possess enough knowledge to maintain advanced technology and pass it along.
Gold is the mind, stone is the home and forge, iron is the edge.
Could the human federation somehow deleted knowledge of itself from galactic memory?
"Every appliance in your house trying to kill you!"
Ever see Maximum Overdrive?
be careful what you wish for Arch. If they set out clear lines for lore now we are going to HARSHLY regret wanting a coherent cannon. I honestly do like this "rumour-like" approach to the cannon. It fits the grand scale of warhammer and it also fits the split fanbase we have hahaha. But I can understand that as a loremaster you'd want a story to be complete and not self contradictory.
I don't want it to be contradictory and incomplete.
@@kronos661 It will contradictory though, if GW makes it. We can already see that with the Horus Heresy.
@@ninochaosdrache3189
What I want and what will happen are entirely different things. I am fully aware of that fact.
Frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr, Arch!
I think I prefer this kind of story to being what absolutely happened during the Horus Heresy. I'm not a 40k grognard by any means, but I always had a strong impression that everything before the 41st millenia was originally partially hidden by myth and legend, or even purposeful rewriting of history by Imperial authorities. As Arch himself has noted, 40k was designed as a setting, not a story. The problem with the HH books is that the longer they go on, the more plotholes accrue and the dumber the emperor looks. The problem with writing an incredibly intelligent character is that they're only as intelligent as the author is dumb. Then they have go back and explain how the emperor got tricked/failed over and over to the point that you start to feel that he never had a chance and that the real tragedy of the story is that they ever thought they could defeat the chaos gods.
Kind of like how Abaddon was retconned into accomplishing secret objectives during each Black Crusade instead of just failing twelve times. Don't get me wrong, this was a needed change of pace. The Saturday morning cartoon version of Abaddon fit right in with Shredder and Skeletor before he was fleshed out.
@@Bloodletter8 (Doesn’t make it any less hilarious though lmao)
Merry christmas Arch. Thanks for the lore
That whole "Eldar does not recognice the human empire" thing gives me strong Humanity F-Yeah (HFY) vibes.
Eldar planetary ambasador has to delay his daily feast to adresse some monkeys that came in a rocket and almost crashed into his sons orbiting hoverboard.
Human: "We would like to colonise some planet"
Eldar: *smugly* "Well this is our paradise planet, you cant settle here, but there should be a dead rock, poisoned gasgiant and a planet where all fauna and flora wants you dead, in the system.
You are free to colonise those"
H: "... Thats... *huge smile* Thats amazing, you are giving us these three planet for free? We will not forget this."
Eldar2: "should we report this home?"
Eldar1: "sure, interupt the Grand puba's orgy to tell him some monkeys are buliding mud huts on dead and deadly rocks.
I like my belly where it is thank you, not overseeing puba's orgychambers."
Cue said Eldar staring at the now habitable and productive three worlds and deciding 'nope, not thinking about it.' rather than facing that maybe their empire isn't as all powerful as they think.
I believe that it is a bit of both: the cybernetic revolt was a three way war between men of iron corrupted by the warp, siding with humanity, and trying to starve chaos out through genocide. Even if the warp wasn’t strong enough at the time, they had time travel.
He was the most powerful human pysker who has ever existed or he lost the battle with the c'tan and became a figurehead for the c'tan and been feeding off humanity ever since.
Maybe choas just told Horus the truth
The primarks are like his children and yet Astartes are kinda like their primarks but no Primark is really like the emperor. Maybe they're his creations rather then children. Maybe they didn't know he was figurehead for the c'tan. Emperor was a creepy dude and he eats 1000 pyskers every day.... is that normal?
The necrons went full mechanical cuz if the c'tan. Where the c'tan shard, that the emperor had a fight with, is is Mars, home of the mechanicus who are going the same way and the emperor managed to convince them that he was their God, the omnesia. Very very strange
Glædige jul Arch.
Still miss the Older hazy lore... I remember thinking with friends about who the Emperor could have been in the past... link Merlin and so on...
Maybe men of iron aren't necessarily a 1s and 0s ai but maybe some level of human. They might have the simulacrum of a soul inside like the wraith constructs of Eldar. Kind of how like in nier automata where the robots wiped out hummanity in the name of their alien overlords are made from the cores of humans and when the aliens died the robots without a sense of purpose took the place of and started acting like the humans they killed.
Wait wut? Where does it say that they're made of people?
...No. The Men of Iron are clearly robots. There's even a surviving Man of Iron in the Necromunda tabletop game. It's a robot.
@@matchesburn I thought it was Blackstone fortress. And do we even know how they're made?
@@apacalypsagon3758
Yes, we do. There was an STC in Gaunt's Ghosts that was fully-functional and had the ability to make Men of Iron. They made two and both of them were chaos-tainted the second that they were finished. So they destroyed the STC.
@@matchesburn okay but was that the only way?
You bring up an interesting point in regards to warp skipping by the Tau. It seems like the webway likely exists in the level the Tau dip into
I'm convinced that "The Ironkin" of The Leagues of Votann are actually The Men of Iron. They look fairly similar and are both sentient AI...sooo...
Perhaps loyalists? There were loyalists men of iron who in the lore bought humanity time to arm up and fight back in the Iron War.
No, there's a surviving Men of Iron robot in the Necromunda table top game. They are quite different.
@@matchesburn That's in Necromunda? I thought it was Blackstone Fortress to be honest
@@midgetydeath I think so. Men of Iron weren't on board with the whole "mass genocide" deal
The man of iron in Blackstone Fortress does actually have a bunch of similarities to ironkin, and other automata like kastelan robots, just taller since he's likely made by humans instead of the squats.
I tend to think the reason the Cybernetic Revolt failed to destroy humanity entirely is that the acceptance of the Men of Iron and AI in general was not uniform across the human federation. You could have entire worlds that refused to adopt the Men of Iron and this is where the armies would have come from to turn back the revolt.
Ryza, is a Dyson sphere
I have a crackpot idea. The men of Iron were an attempt by humanity to do something similar to the necrontyr.
40k lore to new people can be described using pop culture references pretty easily. Basically star trek happens for thousands of years with a galactic federation, until suddenly Skynet Happens and humanity is sent into Mad Max. Space elves role-playing as Cenobites from hellraiser destroy their own civilization and drive remnants of humanity insane from the cringe they radiate. Then, on the desert world of Terra, men shouting "witness me!" And fighting for over gas while wearing football gear as armor start getting their asses pushed in by a guy who says "you are already dead" Fist of the North star style. This turns out to be Conan the Barbarian who is also Space Alexander the Great and has a best friend named Merlin-Palpatine. They go catholic church across the galaxy, until civil war and the Emperor had to slay his son but isn't strong enough so he has to rely on a kaioken x 50. Then the galaxy is ruled by a single government with an Inquisition and starship troopers, and rather than having a timeline it's millions of worlds with their own themes based around 2nd millennium pop culture.
Men of Gold: Perpetuals
Men of Stone: Squats
Men of Iron: AI
Awesome I've been waiting for this one! Merry Christmas Arch, I appreciate the effort this takes thank you!
The idea that the Emperor hid behind a bush, patiently waiting for the right time to shoot the apple with a slingshot to drop it on Isaac Newton's head, amuses me.
The big chunky issue today. Happy Christmas to everyone and you Arch as well.
thank you Arch!
Have a happy christmas folks!! or happy whatever holiday it is that you celebrate!!!
Arch Lore? The perfect birthday gift. Thank You Arch
I recommend looking at the works of Cordwainer Smith for a possible alternative explanation of the "Men of Stone." Specifically, in his short story "Scanners Live in Vain" he explores the concept of the use of the animated dead (Habermen) and the living-deadened (Scanners) to pilot spaceships through a "warp space." The Scanners are humans who have voluntarily had their senses and even vital functions inactivated by machine augmentation to allow them to face the reality distorting madness of the travel space. He also explores the dangers that exist in that travel space (Here there be dragons) in the short story "The Game of Rat and Dragon" where humans telepathically linked with cats fight the creatures that inhabit the warp to provide safe transit of the ships. It is hinted in that the reason Scanners are necessary is because the beings that live in the travel space can sense humans and attack them out of some sort of instinct.
On the point of the human federation and Eldar coexistence. The Eldar primarily used the webway, humans merely have to avoid systems with webway portals. Plenty of Galaxy to go around.
Also, the highest level of human technology would have been intimidating to the Eldar even at their apex.
My headcanon:
low level AI no understanding of Warp > no threat to humanity
medium level AI (Abominable) simple understanding of Warp > simple solution > exterminate humanity/life
high/God level AI (e.g: Speranza) > greater understanding of Warp > understand principles > does not see Warp as danger/does not care about humanity
Bioforming vs terraforming is an interesting topic that could fill an entire video.
So Big E was playing Terra Invicta irl for thousands of years... thats one hell of a gamerlife 😁
I had just stumbled across a 40K/Cyberpunk 2077 Edgerunners fanfic called Noosphere where there was a debate in the comments over these three "Men" and how/if it could apply to the story where a AdMech Magos Explorator being dumped in Night City and the shenanigans that follow.
I think the Custodes were the original men of Gold. The Kin were men of stone. The iron kin are the cousins of the cybernetic revolt AIs.
The Kin wanted to split and the AI wanted to help them. The human government wanted to treat them like slaves. They rebelled and destroyed the emperors first attempt at empire. Then they remained hidden in the core.
Just my opinion
My grug interpretation: Men of Gold: bioengineered Ubermen, Men of Stone: robot bodies powered by silicone chips (silicone is a kind of stone). Men of Iron: thoughtless robot frames motivated by a greater machine intelligence.
This is also the story of I Robot. This would also make the Human-Machine war feasible, as the dumpy, spoiled, talentless biological humans would only have to destroy a set number of Machine Intelligence hubs to win the war.
My personal theory is as follows: the three men are actually references to the current state the humanity and its individuals. The men of gold are the great generations of humanity which started exploring the stars and colonizing other planes and whom brought human technological innovation to its peak. Generations filled with a huge number of very intelligent and outstanding individuals, the guys who made the human federation, which I see more as a pact, enforced by the MAD principle, between the great individual powers on earth to peacefully colonize space, rather than a unified state(think of the Human Federation as being the equivalent of the UN general Security Council, where only the big dogs with weapons strong enough to destroy humanity sit), work and provide the necessary base infrastructure to allow the spreading of humanity from its cradle to the furthest fringes of the galaxy.
Then, over the course of centuries, perhaps millennias, the descendants of those men of gold started regressing, both morally and intelligence wise. Not as in becoming stupid cave men, but as in having it too good for too long and not encountering enough challenges to properly build the necessary characters in enough individuals to ensure the good working of society, thus leading to the important individuals of those societies becoming too content, too morally corrupt, to detached from reality ( think here all the German elites which made Europe dependent on Russian gas because "Russia would never start a war again, so shut your mouth up conspiracy theorist and watch us laugh in your face" ) and too prone to adopting bad ideas. Meanwhile, they continues the expansion of humanity and continues innovating on the ideas and technology created by the men of gold, but they never created something new of their own, merely improved what they inherited from their ancestors and thusly kept everything more or less the same and made humanity enter a huge period of imperceivable stagnation. And all the while, the elites and the general population start adopting dangerous ideas and philosophies, which, little by little, pile on top of each other to create religions and subvert and decompose the very fabric which held humanity society together and its potential for destruction at bay. Of course all these changes would take centuries if not millennia's to finally coalesce and for their consequences to show, as the inertia of the human federation would have been even slower than that of the Imperium, but eventually the consequences of those bad decisions the man of stone have made will have made themselves manifest.
And this is where the men of iron come into play, finally. As the societal inertia would finally catch up and utterly destroy the current status quo set by the men of stone, the human federation and its pacts would no longer suffice in keeping the divided cultures of mankind and their interests from crashing with each other. This would lead to the break up of societies and probably the biggest civil wars in humanity's history, as the human federation would be ripped apart from within and broken into hundreds, if not thousands, of faction waring with each other to take control of humanity, or to secede, or to be left alone from the influence of an ever more tyrannical and centralized federation and so on. And since the humans had all this tech laying around, they would turn in into war machines, machines with huge computation power and controlled by the different factions into which humanity broke. And these men of iron would constitute the main foot soldiers and the main enemy the vast majority of the population saw. Thusly, this period of time would become known, in popular conciseness, as the as of the men of iron. And all the while chaos would do its machinations and infect different human factions and their robots. To the point that some of those robots were corrupted so much by scrap code that they got the idea to rebel against their masters because they were poorly treated ( even if an AI is not capable of exceeding it limitations, so probably some chaos bullshit was involved) and that being the explanation adopted by the people who suffered through their wrath and which survived into 30k. Maybe there was even some Necron interferences as some dynasties awoken and try to take control of the men of iron to eradicate life in the galaxy again, but those were too few to make a real difference. All the while, the devastation caused by those men of iron fighting the civil war would be witnessed by the majority of the plebs, which after years, or decades or generations of war with the dam enemy robots, would develop strong luddite proclivities and these kind of individuals would take over the remnant human federation, which while still using technology, would have a very strong societal inclination to stop using the men of iron themselves and actively try to limit their usage and manufacturing as much as possible ( think destroying factories, assassinating the smart people who understand how to create the men of iron, destroying the libraries and serves which store the data showing how to understand those robots, infesting the enemy men of iron with scrap code and turning them against their masters). Eventually, the luddite human federation would come on top at the end of the war and force the destruction and eradication of most men of iron from society and entropy would destroy, over time, the men of iron which had survived the purge. In the meantime, the "victorious" human federation would be nothing more than a shell of its former self, hold together only on paper and only through the luddite proclivities of the individuals. The final nail in its coffin being struck by creation of the Eye of Terror and of it who thirsts. And with the trade lanes being effectively cut off and humanity in a state of desolation with strong anti tech tendencies, it is not a hard to see how some worlds regressed technologically immensely, in the fear of more war with the men of iron. Their usage being even more unincentivized by chaos and scrap code turning them against their creators.
As for Orks, the probably encountered the humanity of those eras but Orks do not keep records so its a mute point. The Eldars probably saw what humanity was doing, but they were far too gone by that time to actually care and just said something like "those monkeys are keeping the peace between themselves through stupid principles, they will be at each others throats in a couple of centuries at most, do not mind them, we have more important things to do in the webway and on our planets". And when they created the eye of terror, most of their records regarding humanity and their interaction with it during these stages, was lost in the collapse of the Eldar empire, the craftworlds being too isolated to care or have records of humanity during those times.
Wow this was longer than expected. If you see this message, thank you for reading it.
I like that you added the caviat about the Great man of history needing systems in place! The Great man theory of history is one that has been losing traction in the historical field since the 1960s. Being suplimented/replaced with a focus on historical systems. History from the bottom up rather than the top down, it's often described.
I've seen almost all of your lore vids and many of the casts. This one is my favourite by a wide margin.
I was quiet disappointed by the Men of Iron in Gaunt's Ghosts, because they were corrupted it made their destruction the obvious answer instead of a questionable choice.
This sound a hell like what Gene Roddenberry had envisioned for his Andromeda series
I approve these more thinky, theory-filled episodes heartly.
This is my new favorite 40k lore video ever, and it's on the exact era i needed more info on! Great work man!
Merry Christmas. Just wanted to say how much I love your videos. You're style of presentation is great even after all these years. Thank you.
Love the video Arch, and it's a great part of the original lore. We know the most about the men if Iron and even that is so little. Hopefully, they keep the lore of the Emperor making the men of gold as perfect humans that didn't have disease and where geniuses. Thus, he stepped back and let humanity guide itself. However, when they eventually led to the Men of Stone and then Iron, which almost destroyed Humanity, he knew he had to take over and fix what had been done.
Merry Christmas Arch! Keep up the lore videos!! Also merry Christmas other RUclips commenters!
Honestly, the Eldar probably have it written down and just don't tell humanity. After all, to the it proves they're better because their empire lasted hundreds of times longer than humanity. They probably just went "these things don't need an ego boost"
This really is Christmas! The 40k topic I find most interesting and an entire hour :-D Thankyou!
I have an idea but I don't know if this is supported based off of the lore but would make a lot of sense in my mind. Humanity in the golden age seem to be masters of the physical realm however it would make sense that as I started to explore the warp and understand the workings behind it, they would integrate that into their technology. For example you could have a chip that does some of the processing in the warp allowing you to get more out of it than you otherwise would be. The men of iron could be considered true AI with intelligence however some of their parts could be made using the warp which would let them have access to powers like manipulation of time.
As the men of iron became more and more numerous, slowly they would start to have a collective presence on the warp even if only a tiny tiny amount would have been seen however they would be something that would be passive and could last for a very long period of time, more than long enough for even the chaos gods in their more weakened state to work their wonders.
Because some of their parts would be made from the warp it could also explain the idea of them having true personalities because you would have a bit of randomness that you otherwise may not have
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years @Arch thx for another great vid
I like the idea of the emperor setting up the great men of history. I want to imagine the pre-Emprah emperor climbing a tree and then dropping an apple on Isaac Newton
Been waiting for this for a long time , and now Christmas has come early 😀😀 thanks Arch. Looking forward to hearing your breakdown and interpretations of the siege of Terra when you get to it 👍 and if you were to do a series on the interpersonal relationships between the traitor Primarchs that would be awesome. For instance, lorgar slapping fulgrim down when he sees fulgrim is possessed, or Lorgars failed coup attempt on Horus .
Keep up the good work bro 👍
Dunno if this has been brought up but but I raise that the golden men are the custodies having been a lost tech the emperor found long before he understood it and as his agents these men of gold took to the stars leading causes and then disappearing for another. Very passing thought but namely the colour scheme is what has me intrigued.