| rdfs:comment | - Far back in Mankind's history, during the dawn of the Age of Technology, humanity forged out into the stars with hope and trepidation in their hearts, seeking to extend their dominion over the vast and mysterious gulfs of space. Sublight Long March colony ships soared out from the human homeworld, tiny motes of life drifting through the vast tracts of unexplored space. When the Long March colonists settled their assigned worlds, upon making planetfall they quickly discovered that many of these worlds were often inhabited, either by monstrous predatory beasts or sentient alien races that resented the sudden appearance of these invaders from beyond the stars. To protect them against all of these terrible threats, the colonists had their Standard Template Constructs -- miracles of technology
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| abstract | - Far back in Mankind's history, during the dawn of the Age of Technology, humanity forged out into the stars with hope and trepidation in their hearts, seeking to extend their dominion over the vast and mysterious gulfs of space. Sublight Long March colony ships soared out from the human homeworld, tiny motes of life drifting through the vast tracts of unexplored space. When the Long March colonists settled their assigned worlds, upon making planetfall they quickly discovered that many of these worlds were often inhabited, either by monstrous predatory beasts or sentient alien races that resented the sudden appearance of these invaders from beyond the stars. To protect them against all of these terrible threats, the colonists had their Standard Template Constructs -- miracles of technology whose fragmentary remains are still prized to this day by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Each Standard Template Construct database and fabricator assembly allowed the settlers to mass-produce a specific object or device flawlessly and without the need for skilled engineers. From domestic tools to weapons of war, the STCs were the single most important tool the colonists possessed to ensure their survival. Foremost amongst these devices were those that produced the bipedal exo-suits that came to be known as Knights. The Knight suits proved all but unstoppable, acting as the mailed fist of interstellar human colonisation and carving out new realms within which Mankind might prosper and thrive. Somewhere between the 22nd and 25th Millennia, the beginning of the time of interstellar darkness known as the Age of Strife closed in with horrifying swiftness upon Mankind's galactic domain. Thinking machines rebelled against their masters, slaughtering whole planetary populations like cattle or plunging them into worldwide wars of mutual annihilation. Monstrous and unnatural phenomena were unleashed that depopulated worlds in mere solar hours. Colonists died screaming amid madness and horror, or else loosed world-killing weapons and horrifying phages to secure their own destruction before a worse fate could consume them. Warp Storms roared into being that cut off worlds or even whole star systems, trapping them in hells of their own making from which none could escape. Amid all this horror, as the darkness engulfed one gleaming monument to human endeavour after another, the Knight Worlds simply endured. Their very conservatism and backward nature had insulated them, ensuring they were sidelined and forgotten by those who might otherwise have brought them to ruin. During this time, their neo-feudal societies became even more insular, the knightly houses consolidating their power bases and defending their borders with grim tenacity. Cut off and forced to fall back on their own means, the Knight Worlds became entirely self-sufficient. During this period of isolation, the technical caste that repaired and maintained their lords' Knight suits first rose to prominence -- though they were still vassals of the Knight Houses. It was widely recognised that without such craftsmen, the armoured battlesuits of the nobles would cease to function, leaving their people defenceless. Indeed, despite the best efforts of the nobles and craftsmen both, many Knight Worlds did fall into decline, or else were overrun by the creatures that crawled from the darkness of Old Night. Yet many more endured, stoic as ever while the standard years became centuries and the centuries millennia.
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