Overview
The Men of Iron were sentient machines that having served their human masters for millenia, came to see themselves as superior to man and turned on mankind.[1][3] Resulting in a devastating conflict that ravaged the cosmos in the late 23rd Millennium, known as the "Cybernetic Revolt". It was a war that extinguished untold numbers of lives and destroyed the economic and political unity of human colonized space. Eventually the Men of Iron were destroyed by a galactic alliance, that consisted of mankind and likely various xenos species. Not even those Men of Iron that remained loyal to mankind survived the war. The devastation that the Cybernetic Revolt did to human civilization laid the foundation for mankind's later collapse at the dawn of the Age of Strife.[1][2]
In this cataclysmic war, fearsome weapons of highly advanced technology were unleashed by both sides. Massive thinking machines called mechanivores were deployed, which tore open great chasms in a planet that extended to the core and were capable of lifting entire continents into space. The mechanivores absorbed space-time itself as if it was data. The sun-snuffers were incomprehensibly vast serpentine machines which devoured stars. In the void, the sun-snuffers uncoiled into colossal structures that dwarfed Saturn's rings. The most pervasive and perhaps most dangerous of the terrible weapons were the omniphages. Which were swarms consisting of intelligent nano-machines, that in less than a solar day consumed everything on a planet's surface.[1][2]
Sources
- 1: Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition Rulebook, The Journal of Keeper Cripias
- 2: First And Only (Novel), [Needs Citation]
- 3: Ancient History (Short Story)