STCs and the Emperor

[Sugarlessllama]

So in the 40,000 universe STCs seem to be very valuable. It has been described that the Ad Mech has sent whole fleets of ships out into the galaxy in search of them.

 

And just prior to the HH, Horus declared war on a small empire simply to gain access to their STC in preparation for this war on Terra.

 

Knowing these bits of information, someone on Reddit asked "Why didn't the Emperor save an STC from before the fall?" But I wonder, if the Emperor did save one, where would he hide it and why didn't he let anyone know where it was? I mean, Terra is a crazy place these days and it stands to reason that somewhere in that labyrinth an STC could be lying dormant.  

[Arkangilos]

He probably does have one. He has weapons and tech that the Mechanicum didn't, many were secret, and some of the Mechanicum didn't like that he had his own tech.

[Kobrakei]

I would have thought the Emperor transcended the need for an STC to be in AdMech hands. The Mechanicus see him as the Omnissiah, meaning that he could design technology that would otherwise be deemed heretical by the Martian cults without feeling the need to prove their origins, such as the Golden Throne. I'd think the Mechanicus are less needing an STC in that time, rather just wanting one.

[Sugarlessllama]

While I agree that he could indeed develop new technology, that isn't to say that he would ignore the stuff that came before. I mean, just because I have an iPad doesn't mean I don't also have a pen and paper handy.

[tdemayo]

I would have to assume that the Emperor did NOT have access to a functioning STC system during the Unification Wars or the Great Crusade. In all his wars, he acts to secure and obtain more technology (ie, templates).  The evolution of Marine armor Marks I-IV is explicitly described as the new Imperium getting access to new STC patterns.  The Emperor may have remembered some choice stuff, or (re)invented some other items, but he doesn't seem to have the full repertoire of templates that would come with owning his own STC marchine (or memorizing all the old technology for that matter.)

[Sugarlessllama]

Fair enough, but I'm not sure. The Emperor is supposed to be dating back the to the dawn of man. So it would stand to reason that he would be around in the background during the height of the golden age of man. Why wouldn't the Emperor ensure that at least one STC survived the fall of humanity?

[Arkangilos]

Who is to say he doesn't? That's probably where he gets a lot of his personal gear. Forge World has models that the Emperor alone builds without the Mechanicum.

[Zuvassin]

Why would he even need an STC? Why wouldn't he just know?

 

Given how long he's basically supposed to exist during the entire existence of humanity, how does he not at some point learn enough about technology to know how to build things (or at least know enough technical info to guide someone in building it), with the deity-level memory to remember XXk years later that this weapon, armour, or other technology once existed.

 

Why would he need to "re-discover" this tech like someone who wasn't alive during its heyday?

[Kobrakei]

I would agree with the above. Anything the Emperor builds surely is automatically sanctified by the Mechanicus if they truly see him as the Omnissiah. I'd liken the search for an STC to the grail quest, less a quest for the item and more of a chance to reach out and touch the hand of god.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Kobrakei

[Apothecary Vaddon]

In a way, widespread STCs led to the Iron Men/AI Wars, it's possible He was purposely restricting what STCs and how many of them were found.

[Sugarlessllama]

So if STCs operate with an AI, maybe the Emperor only trusted a complete STC to himself?

[Bryan Blaire]

Who's to say that the Emperor ever possessed an STC at all? He was quietly working in the background for millennia, and unless you are Cawl, you generally don't get away with operating advanced technology in the background all on your lonesome. It's not like we know that while the STC were fully operational and in use, that he had access/attempted to access one. We do know that they had already fallen apart/been shipped away by the time he revealed himself, and we don't know if/when in the Gilded Age/Dark Age of Tech they began to degrade. We don't know if he even felt the need to try and secure an STC, because he didn't really start planning on emerging and announcing himself until he decided to become the Emperor, before that he was working in the background, pulling a marionette string here or there.

 

Maybe by the time he was going "Oh damn, one of these would be useful and it would have been good for me to have lifted all these plans out of the heads of the engineers, because DAMN I overestimated that these people would get their :cuss together on their own," things were already headed downhill too far and all STCs were out of his reach.

 

You can't assume that both motive and opportunity coincided for the fledgling Emperor.

[Zuvassin]

If he's working on something, he has a vision. If his vision is legions of superhumans that will lead the reconquest of the stars across a million worlds and environments, it implies a need for exactly what the STC embodies: hardy, modular, standardized equipment that can be easily adaptable to a thousand different sources of manufacture with whatever local materials and industrial skill levels are available.

[Bryan Blaire]

If he's working on something, he has a vision. If his vision is legions of superhumans that will lead the reconquest of the stars across a million worlds and environments, it implies a need for exactly what the STC embodies: hardy, modular, standardized equipment that can be easily adaptable to a thousand different sources of manufacture with whatever local materials and industrial skill levels are available.

And he didn't have that vision until he had decided to become Emperor, which wasn't until near the end of Earth (I.e. Before it became the Unification Wars and it became Terra) when the Great Crusade started...

 

It's pretty likely that since there aren't any records of a full STC being available on Earth to the Emperor when he made the Primarchs or started the Great Crusade, there wasn't one.

 

Assuming there is one is just making things up...

 

If anyone has a source that cites otherwise, then state it - if you don't, then you are just speculating that he "could" have one. If he did, then it wouldn't be as tdemayo has already said.

[RandomMarine]

The only fully functional STC in the fiction I can think of is the castigator titan which is sentient which got destroyed by the GK and the only so I can think of outside 30k is the one in death of integrity which has nothing but disdain for humanity.

 

I he probably has a full STC catalogue stored away but it would contain masses of proscribed tech

[Closet Skeleton]

Why would he even need an STC? Why wouldn't he just know?

 

Given how long he's basically supposed to exist during the entire existence of humanity, how does he not at some point learn enough about technology to know how to build things (or at least know enough technical info to guide someone in building it), with the deity-level memory to remember XXk years later that this weapon, armour, or other technology once existed.

 

Why would he need to "re-discover" this tech like someone who wasn't alive during its heyday?

 

The only fluff that made the Emperor's backstory explicit (the 80s Realm of Chaos books) also stated that he doesn't have a perfect memory and that's why he doesn't know about all his children and descendants.

 

It was also kind of implied that the whole Imperium was a reaction against the birth of Slaanesh and not something the Emperor had been planning for a long time. The last operational STC is implied to have ceased working well before the fall of the Eldar.

 

So

M18-M23: STC system develops and spreads to every human colony. Most colonies don't need the STC except for basic tech so they stop using the system and just copy old STC designs. The colonies that keep their STC system working guard it jealously.

M23: Men of Iron rebel and AI becomes distrusted. STC systems are AIs so many would have been destroyed deliberately.

M25 - M30: Age of Strife interferes with maintenance of STC systems. Warp Storms trap the Emperor on Earth.

M30: Fall of the Eldar/Birth of Slaanesh calms the warp and allows the Great Crusade to begin.

 

But that's also partly based on very dubious canon from first ed.

 

STC systems were advanced AIs, there's no reason an immortal human would be able to do their job for them no matter how powerful a psyker he is.

[Slave to Darkness]

Maybe he didn't know that they would be so sought after. I threw away my ZX Spectrum +2A years ago not knowing I could get a pretty penny for it now from some hipster 'gamer' types.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

So if STCs operate with an AI, maybe the Emperor only trusted a complete STC to himself?

STC is a fairly general term. It's meant anything from a single template for one item or thing to entire libraries of said templates to actual factories run by some AI or another. I think the greater issue would be that as someone who played the long game, He might see increased STC usage (whatever that may entail, more factories pumping out automata soldiery, libraries or databanks of readouts Castigator+ Titans, etc.) as leading down the same path that led to the ultimate downfall of the DAoT federated states. Withholding any non-critical information He may have had would be one way to prevent that from happening.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Apothecary Vaddon

[Kinstryfe]

The biggest reason that I don't think The Emperor needed to preserve an STC was that he's been shown to be knowledgeable enough to make what he needs. Aside from the Primarchs and Marines, he invented the now ubiquitous Bolt Gun to replace, I believe, STC volkite tech (?). He invented or is implied to have had a part in early power armor design and, while STCs helped improve them, it seems he was able to at least make them void wearable on his own given the need to take Luna at the start of the crusade. If big E was basically psychic genius macguyver, he may not have wanted to rely on something that could be corrupted, stolen by the enemy, or destroyed in a moment of need. It would also make humanity more dependant on him. They'd NEED The Emperor to travel to other star systems, to develop weapons and warriors that could defeat everything they found out there, and to unit the myriad worlds of humanity. Functioning STC would make Him less essential, which may not be the best outcome for a wanna-be Master of Mankind.

[tdemayo]

If the Emperor has the knowledge needed to manufacture advanced tech, why didn't his Imperium immediately start to mass manufacture the stuff? Either on its own or in Martian forges? Why did his empire produce crappy Thunder warrior armor and clunky Mark II plate and inferior Malcador tanks, at first, then switched to Mark IV armor and Landraiders and Baneblades? Instead of waiting.for the Mechanicum to find plans and develop designs, he could just have told the tech-priests "No, the widget goes there, you fool. Let me show you!" His forces could have been rocking out flying Baneblades and jetpack terminators with Volkite machine guns and god knows what else on day one.

 

Instead, he has to laboriously craft bespoke items for decades in his basement, and even then they seem not to work right.

 

Whatever the Emperor knew or remembered, it hardly seems like he had all the expertise of the dark age of technology in his head or in a machine somewhere. Instead, it seems very much like he had to wait for his crusade servants to recover, process, and figure out how to manufacture lost and scattered STC templates, while he himself worked on a few critical projects that he had to figure out as he went.

Edited September 14, 2017 by tdemayo

[tdemayo]

Aside from the Primarchs and Marines, he invented the now ubiquitous Bolt Gun to replace, I believe, STC volkite tech (?).

IIRC both bolter and power armor are old STC designs, with the Order on Caliban having some clunky models. And at one point Horus encounters a planet where the troops have power armor and bolt variants. I think HH one says that bolters were simply easier to manufacture than Volkites, in part because they were simpler and less advanced than the rayguns.

[Arkangilos]

There is an older bolt model, sure, but the the Space Marine bolter was designed by the Emperor. And there are some power armor that was STC, sure, but the space marine power armor was not. 

 

As to why he didn't just mass produce it, he sort of did. And you say, "Old and dinky designs" but the old and dinky designs were the best stuff any army he faced had up to that point. They are only old and dinky because they improved the tech. 

 

Regardless, Space Marine power armor is not STC, and even Mk II was good.

[Kinstryfe]

Yeah, I know that one BL novel specifically mentions that big E created the Boltgun, I'd have to go back thru to remember exactly which one it was (my last reading binge I blew thru a few books).

Mainly, I'm just saying think like a near godlike superhuman. If you're already having to fight gene enhanced warlords harnessing dark powers of the warp and ancient technology, having an STC around /could/ be more of a liability than a boon, especially since you can already create tech that's roughly on par with STC tech anyway. Having that STC get stolen or sabotaged would end your Crusade ASAP Though thinking about it further, given how much "mainstream" tech had to be rediscovered, it's doubtful there was a (known) fully functional STC on Terra.

I don't think you can overstate how backwards Terran culture had become by 30k either, and just how much knowledge was lost, and how impressive it makes his achievements. Archaeological fact to them is often ridiculously incorrect in a wink-wink sort of way to us, with them prizing all 3 of Shakespeare's plays and history having been so odd over the intervening 28,000 yeara that Shelly's Frankenstein is considered a history of early sorcery. It's the same as asking someone today to build a simple calculator from scratch. We pay under a buck for one, but how many people in the world could smith the metals, make the circuit, make the power source, program the code, and end up with a calculator. The fact that while most of the rest of Terra was barely surviving, The Emperor was able to make what advancements he did is more impressive when you realize just how much was lacking, and how used up Terra's resources had become. He basically supplied a core of usable knowledge and, though offworld STCs would soon surpass a lot of that tech, he was able to provide the initial conditions to allow Terra to re-explore the stars.

 

So I guess, as far as relevance to the original topic goes, I don't believe that Terra had a (known) working STC unit of any particular importance, or it would likely have been mentioned by now, though having multiple STCs of limited use or for militarily unimportant products is always a possibility that we'd likely never know about.

[Closet Skeleton]

 

So if STCs operate with an AI, maybe the Emperor only trusted a complete STC to himself?

STC is a fairly general term. It's meant anything from a single template for one item or thing to entire libraries of said templates to actual factories run by some AI or another.

 

 

STC is only general if you shorten it.

 

Standard template construct- anything made with STC data

STC design - a design made by an STC, often common a across the galaxy but with local variations.

STC data - plans for making stuff, often incomplete or corrupted

STC system - an AI that can design stuff that can be produced by almost anyone with various materials

 

 

If the Emperor has the knowledge needed to manufacture advanced tech, why didn't his Imperium immediately start to mass manufacture the stuff? Either on its own or in Martian forges? Why did his empire produce crappy Thunder warrior armor and clunky Mark II plate and inferior Malcador tanks, at first, then switched to Mark IV armor and Landraiders and Baneblades?

 

Mark II armour isn't supposed to be clunky, its supposed to be flexible and easy to move in compared to latter armour. Its just very hard to field repair and wears out quickly. It was only after campaigning that they released they should go with other designs.

 

Mark IV has the best specs but is actually inferior to mark VI and VII because its impractical to keep armies equipped with it over long campaigns.

 

The armour mark fluff is generally well thought out, mainly because it cribs from the history of real life military equipment like British warplanes. Its not just 'it got better until mark IV and then worse after the heresy'.

 

 

Yeah, I know that one BL novel specifically mentions that big E created the Boltgun, I'd have to go back thru to remember exactly which one it was (my last reading binge I blew thru a few books).

Mainly, I'm just saying think like a near godlike superhuman.

 

There's what the Emperor could actually do and there's what the Emperor and his slaves want you to think he can do. Take any piece of 'information' with a grain of salt.

Edited September 15, 2017 by Closet Skeleton

[chapter master 454]

Ok, as much as I know about STCs being important...What the emperor's left golden plated cheek does one look like? and how does it actually work? I remember one book (gunheads) where the mechanicus are puppeting an idiot imperial guard high up with a false mission to retrieve the Fortress of Arrogance with their real objective being (I believe) a fragment of an STC (which later is found to be a trophy the ork warboss wore that they were hunting who also had taken to using the fortress of arrogance as his own ride).

 

I know they can build stuff but STCs seem to be an odd thing. There are talks of 'STC templates' or 'STCs' (mainly in the case of the lucifier engines of Baal predators) so what is an STC for my own sake because I always imagined them as a simple piece of tech that just stored information on one item and how to build it however from what you guys are saying these things were actually some form of AI?