Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-8881468-20150204091114/@comment-6078851-20150219170053

there is a thread somewhere on here specifically about 40k vs various sci-fi franchises.

as for tech-stagnation: there's also the fact of emps allowing the mechanicus to keep their religious beliefs with emps accepting the position as the omnissiah. so for the last 10,000 years the mechanincum have been under the belief that their god personally ratified their religion. this makes the ecclesiarchy pale in comparison to the mechanicum's zealotry and when it comes to tech their word is more than law, their word is the word of god (at least they think so since emps tried to wipe out religion but capitulated to the mechanicum's religion and actually took up the mantle of their god).

i think there's probably a degree of childishness to the mechanicum's view of new, or arcane, technology: it doesn't conform to "how things are done, and have always been done", as well as the idea that they don't understand how this or that works - "if we don't understand this then obviously it must be heretical and stamped out".

i just had another idea of how emps' death may save humankind: without the astronomican the zealotry of the ecclesiarchy and mechanicum (which will lose some potency with the death of their 'god') will be unable to reach, and admonish, 'heretical' practitioners, so there could be an explosion of new human technology after emps' death. if the imperium were to reverse-engineer alien tech or create hybrid tech, and they absolutely have the capability to do so, the imperium (or whatever's left post-emps) could give itself an insane technological 'leg-up' with eldar, tau, necron and human hybrid-technology - humans in phase-shifting battlesuits traversing the webway in monoliths created from wraithbone :P