#The Men of Iron

[zenosanalytic]

Three Men and a Maybe

HHHHHCHOkay,

SO:

As I revealed in This Post, I have life-longedly loved GamesWorkshop’s(idk WHY my tag for them is separated; I should prob fix that |:T) settings, tho I wouldn’t say I’ve really been a *PART* of its fandom cuz I was at most a lurker in EVERY fandom before Homestuck, but An Idea occurred to me today about some VERY obscure parts of the Imperium’s backstory which would make ALLOT OF THREADS snap NEATLY INTO PLACE, and I’m going to write this theory down(with no idea how unviable their novelizations make it cuz No I Am Not Reading Those Things) even though it will probably be of zero interest to most of my Dear, Dear Sweet Readers u_u u_u

ANYWAY(and under a cut to Spare You All):

All Imperial history is DEEPLY falsified, OBSESSIVELY Censored and Redacted, propaganda; and pre-imperial human history -SPCL the bits from before the birth of Sla’anesh(Yes: I REFUSE to abandon the old spelling; i LIKE that glottal stop there and Im PRESERVING It unu unu unu) wrecked EVERYONE’S shit Thoroughly and Comprehensively- are All Of THAT applied to incomplete -NEVER intentionally preserved- archaeological data, but one thing that this ENTIRELY SUSPECT ~Record~ is clear on(mostly because it’s a central tenet of the Martian Steampunk Techfetishist Cult who builds and maintains, but never Innovates cuz that’d be HERESY!, their equipment) is that back in the Bad Old Days(read: Communist Space-Utopia) Humanity had three classes of “Abominable Intelligences”(AI, get it?) -the Men of Stone, the Men of Iron and the Men of Gold- upon whose labor that Communist Space-Utopia existed, until the Men of Iron rebelled.

From what I’ve read in wikis and what minimal discussion I’ve seen in the fandom the general theories on this tend to be that the Men of Stone were maybe an older class of robots or laborbots, the Men of Iron militarybots, and there’s really no firm idea on who the Men of Gold were(the most popular theories seem to be they were either governmental machine intelligences or some sort of mechanical psyker), but here’s the thing: Why do we think they were all Mechanical?

The recent League of Votann material makes it clear that they’re a clone subspecies derived from genomes specifically engineered for mining work in harsh and non-atmosphere conditions. It also makes clear that ‘the Men of Iron’ were NOT exclusively military bots because the Leaguers STILL HAVE THEM AROUND. THEY DIDNT DESTROY THEM AND RECORD NO CONFLICT WITH THEM(which sort of undermines the whole ‘Oh our Robots went Beserk for No Reason and tried to Genocide all biological life!’ line). They’re citizens like everybody else; self-directed people who just happen to be built rather than decanted out of a clone-vat.

The Humans of what the Imperium calls “The Dark Age of Technology” had the technology to do whatever they liked with the human genome, as ‘abhumans’ like the Leaguers well attest. What if their idea of what constituted an “Artificial Intelligence” included biological constructs? ‘Artificial’ just means ‘Made; Product of Artifice’. What if the Leaguers(scifi takes on Dwarves I remind you) **ARE** the “Men of Stone”, pursuing their own fates independent of the long-dead Federation of “Real” humans which made them to be slaves, just like the Men of Iron living beside them?

But: I haven’t addressed the question of “The Men of Gold”. While it’s just one internet-snake’s fantheory I feel pretty confident about the above, but this next one’s a BIT of a stretch. However: I have what I THINK is a very eloquent way to illustrate it:

That’s The Emperor.

Well: before he was mortally wounded, bound to a giant soul-eating chair, and turned into a demiliche-cum-navigation-beacon by the genocidal fanatics he created to Kill All Nonhumans.

What he’s wearing is called Auric, technically auric-adamantium(auric means golden) armor, and it’s a technology from the ‘Bad Old Days’. He didn’t have much of it and he’d hand it out to his favorites among the Primarchs(those genocidal fanatics who turned him into a psychic lighthouse so they could keep going to breathtaking new places and killing exciting new people).

What if The Emperor is the last ‘Man of Gold’?

I’ve laid out my theory for the Leaguers being ‘The Men of Stone’, and what if something similar, but taken in a RADICALLY different direction, is going on here? What if ‘The Men of Gold’ were artificial biological constructs engineered to Govern the same way Leaguers are engineered to mine and survive? The “Solution” to politics humans have dreamed of for so long: beings incapable of pursuing anything less than the ‘Ultimate Utilitarian Good’(lots of wiggleroom there I’ll warn you!), perfectly logical, utterly dedicated to the survival of humanity(no matter the costs or crimes), peerless in strategy, faultless in rhetoric, infinitely charismatic, Impossible to kill, INCAPABLE of nepotism(or personal loyalty of any kind beyond the expedient, for that matter), and -oh!- also psychics who can know what you want -and how to convince you that their way will get it- before you do, AND project their awarenesses literally across the galaxy at-whim.

What if, taking a page from Voltaire, the humans of “The Dark Age of Technology” made the gods that didn’t exist, and made them In Their Image?

And then those gods, somehow, all died?

All but One.

[zanephillips]

The Iron Claw (2023) dir. Sean Durkin

[ectochrome]

pinklicour showed me the light on twt and i had to do my patriotic duty as a citizen of the vashwood nation

[grabyoursaintsandpray]

Marvel Character Cameos

X-Men '97

Season 1 Episode 10: Tolerance Is Extinction - Part 3

[k-wame]

Jaime Lorente as Néstor & Joel Bosqued as Álex 📺MANO DE HIERRO (IRON REIGN) · S1·EP5 · Crime/Thriller

[kayvsdoodles]

the artist at work

[solidsmax]

Marvel 97'

[timbit-robin-art]

Top 10 comic book characters that are secretly cats (shocking).

[andy-clutterbuck]

The Ones Who Live | 1x03 - Bye

[blushingphoenix]

The original by Jim Lee and the homage by David Nakayama

Hellfire Gala Magazine cover variants

[feedthepigeons]

whoopsie doopsie my hand slipped

anyway click for better quality

[zanephillips]

Jaime Lorente and Joel Bosqued Iron Reign 1.03 "Throne of Blood"

[llmsos]

Happy yaoi day w some old men in love🔥🔥🔥

[agoddamnrayofsunshine]

Reading comics is a lot like reading fanfiction, in the sense that I can pick up a story and immediately say “wtf [insert character here] would never say that” except instead of being written by a fifteen year-old girl in her notes app it is written by the actual adult writers who are getting paid to write this

[ladymirdan]

Iron Warriors are normal about shovels, and I love it.

So normal: