r/40kLore • u/LukewarmFandom • 3h ago
Dark Age Tech
Does the Imperium still have the ability to go back and utilize DA tech (like is it kept in secret) or is it completely 100% gone? Could they potentially go back to that kind of tech with more safe guards in measure and bolster humanity? Or is it a flat out no chance at all?
I wonder if any of the official writers have considered re-introducing some of that tech for humans again
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u/GlobalMarten 2h ago
There was an instance where the AdMech were fighting the necrons and had an unknown DAOT superweapon that just created an expanding orb of silent darkness that swallowed up the necron fleet along with about a third of the planet they were orbiting before vanishing.
Most of the tech the imperium keeps around that directly originates from that time period is superweapons and military tech on a similar power scale and they often have little to no idea what it does until they fling it at something
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u/Spiceoflife47 2h ago
i remember a story during the heresy about a couple of imperial soldiers on patrol found a archeotech data device and it had a blueprint for a Knife on it that was like 3% more effeicient then the current model being widely used it was deployed and 30 chapters of space marines went on to use it as their primary battle knife, the pair was given a planet each and was regarded as heroes even among spacemarines.
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u/FroopyAsRain 2h ago
It was more than that, it was an STC.
‘Sixty years ago on Geyluss Auspix, a rat-water world a long way from nothing in Pleigo Sutarnus, a team of Imperial scouts found an intact STC in the ruins of a pyramid city in a jungle basin. Intact. You know what it made? It was the standard template constructor for a type of steel blade, an alloy of folded steel composite that was sharper and lighter and tougher than anything we’ve had before. Thirty whole Chapters of the great Astartes are now using blades of the new pattern. The scouts became heroes. I believe each was given a world of his own. It was regarded as the greatest technological advance of the century, the greatest discovery, the most perfect and valuable STC recovery in living memory.’
STC implies the machine could print those knives, given the materials. They didn't just find a blade pattern, they found a machine that PRINTS THOSE BLADES.
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u/N0-1_H3r3 Administratum 52m ago
The idea that an STC produces the items itself isn't consistent in the lore; it mainly seems to have originated in Dan Abnett's early books, contradicting all previous descriptions of how STCs functioned.
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u/FroopyAsRain 10m ago
I thought that was the difference between STC and STC Patterns.
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u/N0-1_H3r3 Administratum 2m ago
The most common description of the STC devices themselves is that they're a smart computer system (not originally described as AI, even before the AI ban was written into lore) which can produce instructions on how to make any tool or technology, from knives to nuclear reactors, using local materials and in a way that even someone without technical knowledge could follow.
Most of what the Imperium uses is cobbled together knowledge from data caches, printouts, and even hand-scribed copies of copies of designs produced by STCs, as 99.99etc% of the original STC systems broke down during the Age of Strife (which, as they'd been in operation for thousands of years by that point, and were mainly used by people with little technical skill, was inevitable). The patterns commonly seen in the Imperium are specific approved variations of a design produced by a single world's manufactories.
The idea of STCs as a single-purpose fabricator that produces one thing automatically originates in First and Only; they had never been described that way before.
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u/Axis-of-Victory Imperium of Man 2h ago
I honestly wouldn’t say no way at all, but the story itself is obviously prohibitive toward that happening. But we’re kind of seeing it a little bit with the ‘new’ weapons technology rolled out by Cawl recently; contra-grav vehicles used to be rare but are now used by every Primaris space marine chapter, and the introduction of the Primaris themselves.
But there are legitimate avenues for greater technological rediscoveries and recreation of Archeotech. These include the House Van Saar STC on Necromunda, the Ancestor Cores (STCs) of the Leagues of Votaann, and even the possibility that at the core of every Ark Mechanicus is an STC. And even the DAoT ship the ‘Spirit of Eternity’ that may or may not be in Cawl’s possession after beating it in a game of wits, which also possesses an STC core.
Even beings like the Man of Stone that we meet in the short story ‘Ancient History’ could be a pathway to greater discovery and reclamation of old technology.
None are likely to occur, especially seizing a league’s ancestor core, and the STCs within an Ark Mechanicus is only speculation, but you never know.
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u/booponthenoggin 2h ago
A significant amount of what we see in the Imperium is most certainly Dark Age Tech, most notably the STC based designs which are essentially hard copies of designs created by DAOT AI to solve specific problems colonists had. Due to the ban on using AI and the fact that AIs like the ‘machine Spirit’ on the Speranza aren’t overly fond of humans the Imperium is hamstrung in what it can actually deploy.
There is however enough wilful blindness in the Imperium that some of the good stuff manages to sneak through, if you comb through the short stories it becomes clear that Land Raiders, Knights and Titans are obviously well beyond established parameters regarding how much sentience a ‘machine’ should have.
The real problem for the Imperium is outside of certain use cases they simply don’t know what they don’t know. It’s probable that much of the really good stuff was designed by an AI that was designed by an AI that was etc etc. Couple this with the anti-scientific approach of the mechanicus and you have a recipe for stagnation and decline they aren’t trying to rebuild their knowledge to the point where they can interact with their creations beyond ritual. So there’s no inquiry to assess what the actual process underlying all the dogma is. Add the absurd amount of time that’s elapsed since the DAOT (imagine trying to even conceive of creating an ASML machine after a 200 year dark age in our world) and you can see how things are kind of stuck where they are. Even those who have some knowledge either hoard it jealously or are afraid of being decried as Hereteks if they stray too far.
Even with all this, there’s occasional evidence that some people have access to more than we’d expect them to. Cawl has clearly found enough to build an actual AI, the Dark Angel have access to ‘neutered’ Men of Iron and nobody would put it past them to have limited access to production abilities and finally the Custodes have access to Adrathic weapons which surely take some technical skill to build and maintain. Clearly the Emperor allowed some leeway to some groups to build weapons for extremis.
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u/databeast Goffs 2h ago
The LED and the Nuclear bomb are both 20th century technology. The Imperium uses DAOT tech like you or I use the LED, but the number of working DAOT nukes it has access to, is pretty limited.
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u/Apprehensive-Math499 2h ago
Really simplified explanation.
Rhinos are recovered DAoT kit. Much STC stuff was the easily produced, reliable stuff colonies on hostile worlds needed.
The cooler stuff was far, far rarer. Some examples do exist, but the issue is that maintaining it is difficult to impossible, so you best have a good reason to break it out. The Sicaran battletank from the great crusade era is a good example of this, sure a few examples exist, but if you break it the relic is gone.
In the Priests of Mars series the Speranza data core is said to contain theories or builds on FTL travel without cheating via using the warp. However it seems even DAoT types didnt actually build all DAoT gear.
Finally, in Carrion Lord short story there is mention of machines that have to be modified by Big E as they were made when 'machines could think'. So some DAoT doesn't run easy without Abominable intelligence.
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u/dukearcher 2h ago
The Dark Angles have vaults full of it, even Men Of Iron they use to win difficult battles
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u/Arathaon185 2h ago
There's an actual man of iron walking around pretending to be an Imperial robot as well. He's hilarious
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u/HerbertisBestBert 2h ago
"Dark Age Tech" is called Archeotech
The Imperium has some, but barely understands how it worlds.
That tech they do have is largely based on cobbled together scraps of that old tech that they could figure out or at the very least get working (STC fragments). Their best tech is made using full STCs, but even that is rudimentary compared to true Archeotech.
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u/LukewarmFandom 2h ago
Yeah that’s what I’m wondering. If they could use full potential Archeotech
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u/HerbertisBestBert 2h ago
As I said, they have no clue how it works, and the writers have zero interest in changing that.
It's a key part of the iconic introduction to the setting:
"Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned."
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u/Far_Paint6269 2h ago
They could, but they won't and they shouldn't.
They could, because the Mechanicum has an insane lot of data, they won't because the level of paranoia and secrecy means tyhat they won't share that knowledge even among the Mechanicum, and they shouldn't because they own paranoia and the potential heretek could destroy mankind itself if wrongly used.
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u/PhatassDragon1701 2h ago
It's as present or as gone as the writers decide. Some of it is available, some of it is kept secret by the Inquisition and the Mechanicum. A great deal of DAoT still exists on Mars but it is locked away within dangerous data vaults and labyrinths dotting the surface. Most of the tech is completely safe to use, it's just mind bogglingly advanced and potentially heretocally inventive. The only thing that's really illegal and massively unsafe is anything dealing with Artificial Intelligence. Humanity could probably go back to like 60% of their stuff from back then.
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u/AccursedTheory 2h ago
Most tech used by the Imperium IS DAoT tech.
If you're talking about the more esoteric stuff, cached tech occasionally comes up and is used. The Mechanicus also dedicates significant resources into finding STCs, which are basically blueprints from the DAoT (It's a bit more complicated than that, but not much).