Age of Strife

In the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Age of Strife is the name for the chaotic period of human history between the 25th and 30th millennia.

According to the "official" histories of the Imperium, the precise details and dates of the Age of Strife are not known, due to data having been lost over vast amounts of time, to the chaos of that period, and partly to censorship by various Imperial authorities.

Dark Age of Technology
The Dark Age of Technology is the name given to the period of human history that began in the 15th millennium and ended in the 25th millennium, during which huge advances occurred in science and technology. The Dark Age of Technology saw the development of the specialised mutants known as Navigators and the earliest use of the Warp for space travel by human beings, with the greatest extent of space exploration and colonisation taking place during this period. Other notable developments include the Standard Template Construct (STC) system and the Iron Men.

The Age of Technology ended in inter-human war and anarchy, in an era known as the Age of Strife, as massive warp storms cut off interstellar travel. The STC systems lapsed into disuse or decayed. The Adeptus Mechanicus have made finding a functional system their ultimate goal and are willing to go to any lengths to find even the smallest printout from an STC.

Causes and Beginning
During the so-called "Dark Age of Technology" humanity had reached its technological peak. The "Standard Template Construct", or STC, had been perfected by human scientists and allowed unprecedented expansion of humanity throughout the galaxy.

One of the reasons humanity was so successful at conquering a large part of the galaxy was the development of the artificial constructs now only known as the "Iron Men". These powerful and fully autonomous battle robots won many wars for humanity, but for some reason turned against their masters at the end of the Dark Age of Technology. The war was eventually won by humanity, but at a great cost. The damage was catastrophic and had shattered much of humanity's power. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning.

As humanity became widely dispersed during the Age of Technology, the ancient Eldar Empire began its decline; the great success of the advanced Eldar race had led to decadence and hedonism on a great scale. Within the psychic universe of the warp, the spiritual corruption of the Eldar civilisation was reflected in the forming of a new Chaos god, in turn causing massive disturbances in the warp; parts of the galaxy became isolated by these warp storms, making warp travel and communication impossible, cutting off many human worlds, including those of the Solar system. The Age of Strife followed the Age of Technology, as human civilisation collapsed in widespread insanity, daemonic possession, anarchy and inter-human war. Terrible weapons of the golden age of technology were unleashed, devastating many human colonies and turning verdant worlds such as Baal Secundus into irradiated desert planets. Many isolated and vulnerable human-colonized worlds also became prey to hostile alien races, such as the Orks.

For mankind, the worst event of this period was the appearance of psykers within humanity. While persecuted in many human worlds as witches, in enlightened and progressive societies these psykers were at first protected and accepted. The intolerance of psykers would seem prescience, as many human worlds fell to the dominance of daemons and other warp creatures using possessed psykers as gateways.

In a relatively short span of time, the galaxy-spanning human civilization was brought to its knees, and was forced to endure nearly five millennia of anarchy, terror, war and slavery. Other than tales of great suffering, little information has survived this dark time.

Earth and Mars
Earth and the rest of Solar System was surrounded by terrible warp storms, isolating the human home world for several thousand years. Control of the Solar System shifted constantly between Earth and Mars during the first half of the Age of Strife. By the 28th Millennium all traces of civilization on Earth were almost long gone; instead, techno-barbarians battled one another over the scraps of the ancient culture. Little information remains from this dark time, but it is known that tyrants such as Kalagann of Ursh (northern Asia/Russia), Cardinal Tang, and ("the half-mad half-genius") Narthan Dume of the Panpacific Empire ruled during this age. Other known nations include the Yndonesic Bloc, the Urals (a centre of industry), the Jermani, Gyptus, Merica, Afrique, the Terrawatt Clan and Alba. Another race mentioned are the 'Nordyc' people.

Mars underwent a very different transformation. After brief anarchy, the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus emerged victorious over the mutants and unified their homeworld. The tech-priests then visited Earth but were appalled at the destruction there and saw nothing worth saving. Instead, the Martians studied the warp and after many lifetimes learned to detect 'lulls' in the warp storms. At the same time the immense fighting machines known as Titans were created.

For over a thousand years the Cult Mechanicus watched and waited. Whenever a break in the warp storms occurred, an expedition was sent, complete with a full Titan Legion and thousands of servitors and tech-priests. Some of these expeditions were lost in the warp or died on faraway worlds. Others succeeded in establishing 'Forge Worlds' - replicas of Mars. Broken messages were transmitted to Mars, but it was not until the time of the Great Crusade that the Forge Worlds and Mars would be reunited.

The End of the Age, and the Rise of the Emperor
Eventually, an immensely powerful human leader and psyker known as the Emperor divined that the final birth of Slaanesh was nearing, as well as the effect this birth would have. He made preparations for this galaxy-changing event; he gathered military forces, began his conquest of Earth, and started the processes necessary to create his genetically tailored super-warriors, the Primarchs and then, from the Primarchs' genes, created the Space Marines.

Upon the birth of Slaanesh sometime in the early 31st millennium, the crippling warp storms were swept away (which allowed for easier galactic travel), the Eldar race was nearly annihilated, and the Emperor began to carry out his plans to reunify humankind under his rule. With the Emperor's ascension, the Age of Strife was finally over and a new age had begun. This brief age of conquest, heroism and unity would be known as the Great Crusade, and it would in turn end with the tragedy of the Horus Heresy.

Legacy
The Age of Strife had a tremendous impact on human civilization. Humanity barely survived the period, and most of the knowledge of the previous golden era was lost, much of it irrevocably; in particular, the loss of the STC system is seen as a serious setback for the advancement of the Imperium. The Adeptus Mechanicus regards the STC as holy and constantly searches for remnants of STC systems. Although much lost information has been recovered by the efforts of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the focus on re-attaining knowledge from the ancient STC rather than inventing new technology, as well as the centralization of knowledge in the hands of the Adeptus Mechanicus, means that the Imperium has remained at nearly the same technological state for the past ten thousand years.

Humanity as a whole became more superstitious and distrustful, something which the Imperial government goes to great lengths to encourage. In particular, the Imperium distrusts mutants, aliens and psykers; this distrust runs so deep that the Imperium has a complex secret police force, known collectively as the Inquisition, devoted to finding and destroying all aliens, daemons, mutants, unsanctioned psykers and "heretics" (anyone deemed to be straying from official Imperial doctrine) existing within the Imperium. Despite the general distrust of psykers, many critical functions of the Imperium, notably the functioning of the Astronomican, are performed by them, so they are often rounded up by Imperial agents and forced into service. The Adeptus Ministorum ("the Ecclesiarchy"), the official religious hierarchy of the Imperium, enforces a strict dogma including absolute devotion to the Immortal Emperor (who is treated as a god), the dedication to one's duty.

In short, the authoritarian Imperium of Man is the way it is in large part due to the great suffering endured during the Age of Strife.

Why the "Dark Age" of Technology?
During the Dark Age of Technology, humanities' power and technology were at its zenith. Yet, the people of the Imperium invariably refer to it as a "dark age". The main reason for this is that during this time humanity began to rely more and more on its technology, in particular its Artificial Intelligence agents like the Iron Men. Eventually, man became so dependent on its creations that (according to Imperial mythology) it became unclear who was the master and who was the slave. Eventually this culminated in the war with the Iron Men.

With the rise of the Imperium of Man, humanity swore never to repeat the mistakes of the Dark Age of Technology by relying on "Abominable Intelligences" or technology in general. Instead it would rely on on the strengths of humans and humanity itself, where technology would merely complement it. For example, instead of autonomous war machines, the Emperor relied on his (bio-engineered, heavily armed and armoured, but still human) Space Marine Legions to reconquer the galaxy. This has continued up to the 41th millennium, where AI's are considered technoheresy even by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Even technological constructs with a limited form of autonomy (often referred to as a machine spirit) will either have very limited intelligence (like a hunter-killer missile), human biological components (servitors), crew to control it (titans) or combination thereof and only full combat machines the humans use is robotic scouts.