STCs and the Emperor

[Kinstryfe]

I may be off by a bit, but this is how I've always understood it.

A "complete" STC would basically be an automated machine that can build anything it is programmed with, or give you instructions on how to do so, based on what materials and technology it's been told is available. Imagine it almost like a giant 3d printer, you select a template for a Rhino transport, and it makes you one. STC could have a single purpose, or have many, and they were often theoretically used in planetary colonization. You drop it off with the colonists and they can use it to make whatever they need.

 

Next down the list would be effectively the"files" needed to create an object. So you find the complete STC file for a Rhino, and it could potentially be fed into the STC machine you had that makes Chimeras, and it will be able to make Rhinos, or could be used to detail the exact building of a Rhino from start to finish.

 

Further down are things like STC printouts and blue prints. Effectively a static copy that explains how to build the Rhino out of the materials at hand, or more or less depending on how complete it is.

 

A fully functional, complete STC would be like having a machine that can create any of the millions of things programmed into it, whether it is a shelter, a tank, a gun, industrial hosing, paperclips, staplers, whatever is programmed in it. A fully functional limited STC may tell you how to make a limited number of things, or only one thing, with possible variety in materials or tweaks on the outcome, like to substitute iron for steel if steel isn't available, or lumber for brick in a structure. A fragment of STC instructions will tell you how to create one very specific thing in a specific way, and often needs the know how of trained technical experts to understand how it interacts with the rest of the system or technology it is meant for, like a blueprint for the turn signals on a Rhino, or a particular type of plasma canister for weapons.

[tdemayo]

The original STC systems were some kind of computer. We don't know what they looked like (a kind of big box, maybe), but the colonists could input a need and the machine would give them a customized plan for a machine they could build, based on patterns it had in its memory.

 

An STC template or pattern is just a collection of data, a copy of one of those plans the machine produced. They can look like any kind of information storage technology from a computer to a book, I assume, as the downloads or printouts from the original system have been copied and recopied in a variety of formats.

[the jeske]

We are shown a golden age STC colony CPU/factory unit in one of the in to the mealstrom stories. The one about the centuar abhumans.

[Charlo]

A good thing to remember with this is that the Emperor is a selfish ass far beyond the reasoning that any man can comprehend.

 

Could he have had a fully functioning and complete STC (in whatever form) granting him access to any and all of the greatest technologies from before Mankind's dark age? Yes.

 

Does he? Debatable... I however lean on no.

 

If he DID:

• None bar perhaps even Malcodor would know and the Emperor himself would probably seldom use it after the Men of Iron incident.
• The Mechanicum would not be allowed to find out AT ALL. To find out he was withholding that sort of thing, Omnissiah or not, it would have meant a civil war far before Horus' little ditty.
• Depeding on how it works, he would have just endlessly churned out gear beyond anything Mars could even dream of producing, only limited by how big his production facilities are.

If he DOESN'T:

• Then it makes sense why the Custodes and other parties are the only ones with Adrathic weapons, which date back to the Dark Age and are confiscated from all - as a good example.
• The pact with Mars makes sense (beyond the whole, let's not have a civil war thing) and why he needs their tech.
• Why he spends a lot of time creating things and hoards other exotic tech/ guilds etc for his own personal use.

[StraightSilver]

Isn't there also a HH short story where an explorator team turn up on a backwards, almost medieval world looking for an STC only to find the inhabitants are using pen and paper and appear to have no signifcant technolgy?

 

However as soon as the disappointed explorator team leave empty handed the librarian opens a secret door behind a bookcase to reveal a fully fuctioning, intact STC that the planet was hiding all along.

 

So it might be that there are STCs out there - but they are very well hidden?

[Perry]

I believe the Emperor was unprepared for the Fall of mankind. He might have been exploring the Galaxy or even the next galaxy when mankind's civilisation imploded. Perhaps it took him hundreds if not thousands of years to make the long journey across the Milky Way that's pretty much been turned upside down and set on fire towards Earth where he knows he can rebuild society into something future proof and of his design.

 

It can take centuries to build and fill and library and seconds to destroy it, that's why I think the Emperor never had access to a full STC, they were all fragmented by the time he was able to collect them for his project.

[tdemayo]

We are shown a golden age STC colony CPU/factory unit in one of the in to the mealstrom stories. The one about the centuar abhumans.

Oh gods, I now realize that I had successfully repressed the memory of that awful story for decades. Why did you have to remind me of it ;)

[Arkangilos]

<p>

 

A good thing to remember with this is that the Emperor is a selfish ass far beyond the reasoning that any man can comprehend.

 

Could he have had a fully functioning and complete STC (in whatever form) granting him access to any and all of the greatest technologies from before Mankind's dark age? Yes.

 

Does he? Debatable... I however lean on no.

 

If he DID:

• None bar perhaps even Malcodor would know and the Emperor himself would probably seldom use it after the Men of Iron incident.
• The Mechanicum would not be allowed to find out AT ALL. To find out he was withholding that sort of thing, Omnissiah or not, it would have meant a civil war far before Horus' little ditty.
• Depeding on how it works, he would have just endlessly churned out gear beyond anything Mars could even dream of producing, only limited by how big his production facilities are.

If he DOESN'T:

• Then it makes sense why the Custodes and other parties are the only ones with Adrathic weapons, which date back to the Dark Age and are confiscated from all - as a good example.
• The pact with Mars makes sense (beyond the whole, let's not have a civil war thing) and why he needs their tech.
• Why he spends a lot of time creating things and hoards other exotic tech/ guilds etc for his own personal use.

But he isn't selfish. His entire motivation is the expansion and survival of the Human race. Everything he has done has been for humanity, not for himself, hence why he stayed incognito for the majority of time, and only came out whenever Slaanesh was born.

 

You can call him an ass all you want, but you can't call him selfish.

 

Also, I would say it's less that he needs their tech (he clearly doesn't) and more that he needs their production facilities. I can have all the blue prints in the world, if I don't have a factory I can't make much use of them.

 

And yes, he did produce some of his own gear (he supplied all of his armies without them in the beginning), but even the best producing hive worlds pale in comparison to a forge world.

 

---

 

Think of it in a business sense. I am rich and powerful, and charismatic, but only own a small factory. My neighbor owns several HUGE factories, and can out produce me every minute by a huge magnitude. I can try and compete with him, or I can convince him to do a merger with me. I would pick the merger because I do not have the resources to undercut him. So I convince him I'm a god, that I won't strip their brand, we will create a new one and he has semi-equal say. He buys into it and the merger happens. Now my production gets added to his and we are all the richer.

Edited September 15, 2017 by Arkangilos

[the jeske]

 

A good thing to remember with this is that the Emperor is a selfish ass far beyond the reasoning that any man can comprehend.

 

Could he have had a fully functioning and complete STC (in whatever form) granting him access to any and all of the greatest technologies from before Mankind's dark age? Yes.

 

Does he? Debatable... I however lean on no.

 

If he DID:

• None bar perhaps even Malcodor would know and the Emperor himself would probably seldom use it after the Men of Iron incident.
• The Mechanicum would not be allowed to find out AT ALL. To find out he was withholding that sort of thing, Omnissiah or not, it would have meant a civil war far before Horus' little ditty.
• Depeding on how it works, he would have just endlessly churned out gear beyond anything Mars could even dream of producing, only limited by how big his production facilities are.

If he DOESN'T:

• Then it makes sense why the Custodes and other parties are the only ones with Adrathic weapons, which date back to the Dark Age and are confiscated from all - as a good example.
• The pact with Mars makes sense (beyond the whole, let's not have a civil war thing) and why he needs their tech.
• Why he spends a lot of time creating things and hoards other exotic tech/ guilds etc for his own personal use.

 

But you do understand that the emperors goal is not making humanity great again, but getting rid of chaos as a threat. A growning and expending humanity is not the way to getting rid of chaos influence or calming the warp.

 

 

 

. His entire motivation is the expansion and survival of the Human race.

 

 

only it isn't. he realy did have projects that in the end game, if they worked would end up at best as a short lived psychic battery to lighting up the pylons and closing the eye. In the short term, yes he did need the marines, the humans, the primarchs, the ad mecha etc. But saving them or making them "happy" was never the end goal.

[Arkangilos]

I didn't say making them happy, I said the survival of the human race, which IS his goal. I don't get where you get "make them happy" from, "his goal is the survival of the human race".

 

Why did he have all of his pet projects? To defeat chaos. Why does he want to defeat chaos? To ensure the survival of humanity as it evolved.

Edited September 15, 2017 by Arkangilos

[Charlo]

I didn't explain my point about the selfishness (rushed post at work...!)

 

YES, I fully understand the point of his goal to advance humanity (or destroy chaos) but by selfish I mean he trusts no one else and fully believes that only he can deliver humanity into supremacy.

[Sugarlessllama]

So my understanding of an STC was that a complete STC would be device what builds the items, and the complete library of designs. And right now the Ad Mech keep finding STCs with one or two files still in their cache, and on occasion a grimdark thumb drive with some more plans.

 

The idea Perry had is a good one. Maybe the Emperor was caught flat-footed. But then again... if he was behind the scenes the entire time, wouldn't he know the fall was coming?

[Arkangilos]

That's not selfish, though. And he does trust other people. He trusts Malcador, and have seemingly given Malcador almost all authority. He also trusted Horus.

 

Generally when people don't trust others, it's not because they are selfish, it's because they have been betrayed. There are plenty of people I do not trust (almost no one has my full trust on everything), and so when I withhold information from them, or don't give them specific things, it's not because I'm hoarding, it's because I've been burned by it. The Emperor has been around for probably over a hundred thousand years, he probably has been betrayed by people he trusted, and so he learned his lesson.

[Sabadin]

but by selfish I mean he trusts no one else and fully believes that only he can deliver humanity into supremacy.

To be fair, the last time he remotely trusted someone else they torched half the galaxy and confined him to a gold plated toilet for 10,000 years.

[Moonreaper666]

The God-Emperor is not omnipotent

 

I would say that he is the third most all-seeing character

 

The second is Orikan the Diviner

 

The first are the Four Major Chaos Gods (With Tzeentch on top)

[Calyptra]

All-seeing?

 

Are we sure he's not a vegetable?

 

I'm genuinely asking. The last time I checked he was, but I haven't read any of the recent lore.

[Ascanius]

Dark Imperium establishes that, when Roboute Guilliman stood before the Golden Throne, he had a psychic conversation with the Emperor.

 

Now, I mean, it could be a sham - some other psyker hiding in the next room, impersonating him - but Guilliman took it on face value.

 

On the other topic . . . the Emperor's avowed goal isn't exactly selfish, but it's not exactly altruistic to enslave the entire species under your iron fist, either, even if it's "for their own good, ultimately".

[bluntblade]

It's worth remembering that when Ra comprehended the sheer scope of the Emperor's scheme, his first thought was "the hubris of it all."

 

Though for what it's worth, the Emperor's defence of it to him is that it's simply necessary.

[Closet Skeleton]

An STC is not a factory, it doesn't make stuff it just designs them. Some factories like the one in First and Only had integrated STCs so that confuses a lot of people.

 

You can just read the rulebook, it quite clearly tells you what an STC is.

 

The Emperor's purpose isn't the survival of humanity, its shepherding the evolution of the psychic race that will replace humanity. The Emperor was a third column for mutant witches from the start, that's part of the irony of the mutant hating human supremacist side of the Imperium.

[the jeske]

The golden age STC carrying CPU units had or were build in to replication moduls and could very well produce stuff.

 

 

The first are the Four Major Chaos Gods (With Tzeentch on top)

 

Wasn't with tzeench the thing, that he had the option the get an omnipotent knowladge of past and future [and not divination/possible future/etc], but each demon he sent in to the well that gave that knowladge ended up dead or crazy?

 

 

I didn't say making them happy, I said the survival of the human race, which IS his goal. I don't get where you get "make them happy" from, "his goal is the survival of the human race".

 

But it isn't, unless newest fluff changed it. Both the shaman versions of him coming in to existance, say that he was created/birthed to combat chaos in an efficient way. The end goal is the removal of chaos as a threat. Now how this can be done is a seprate thing[easiest way is killing everything that lives, but you do not get a garentee that in milienia some other that has an imprint on the warp won't suddenly pop up]. And emps did dable in different projects, both long and short them[as in long/short for an immortal warp being of course]. And some of those projects were droped like the one from faith&fire .

[Ascanius]

It's worth remembering that when Ra comprehended the sheer scope of the Emperor's scheme, his first thought was "the hubris of it all."

 

Though for what it's worth, the Emperor's defence of it to him is that it's simply necessary.

 

Yep. My own take is that the Emperor pursued the course he did because he believed he could outsmart the Ruinous Powers - whether he planned on shepherding humanity to its next stafe of evolution where it will be safe from Chaos, or cutting off Chaos from the emotional resonance of humanity and thus starving it to death, or both, doesn't really matter.

 

The central myth of the Imperial Cult is that the Emperor suffers on the Golden Throne to safeguard humanity. My interpretation is that the Emperor has spent 10,000 years in stalemate because any being arrogant enough to believe they can defeat Chaos would be prideful enough to refuse to concede when they've lost.

 

The point isn't to save humanity from misery, because the Imperium creates more long, drawn-out suffering over countless generations than extinction at the hands of Chaos would cause, or even from annihilation, because there's absolutely no prospect of victory no matter how many Primarchs come back to reveal secret military projects.

 

The point is the Emperor's incapable of admitting he failed. He's held on for 10,000 years because his arrogance won't let him realise there's no way out.

[Raulmichile]

 

The second is Orikan the Diviner

 

Who is this guy?

[jeffersonian000]

The best way to think of an STC is as a story device or McGuffin. It makes little practical sense given the overall arc of the 40k narrative, and is never described the same way from author to author. They are end goals, nothing more. If you really need something concrete, STC unit is the machine that you feed material so it can pop out whatever it is you gave it plans to build. STC data files the the plans you incert into the STC unit, but can also physically look through to manual follow if you want to hand craft the same item. I envision the files as holographic blue prints, and the unit as a hugainormous 3d printer, but that's just me.

 

The best way to think of the Emperor is as a tool created to guarantee the survival of humanity, that spent 40,000 years setting up a shot that would take 10,000 years to hit the target. He hit the target, just not the bullseye. Everything in 40k is future mythology, told by the survivors on what led to the 10,000 year war and how they got through it. Yes, we play in those events, crafting our own narrative, but the narrative is "already written" with the differences being poetic license of the narrator. We are just waiting for the next chapter.

 

SJ

[Cryptix]

Wasn't Tzeentch's whw stick was that he actually was born at the end of the universe and jumped back to the present to stop it? air has that been retconned?

[bluntblade]

 

It's worth remembering that when Ra comprehended the sheer scope of the Emperor's scheme, his first thought was "the hubris of it all."

Though for what it's worth, the Emperor's defence of it to him is that it's simply necessary.

 

 

Yep. My own take is that the Emperor pursued the course he did because he believed he could outsmart the Ruinous Powers - whether he planned on shepherding humanity to its next stafe of evolution where it will be safe from Chaos, or cutting off Chaos from the emotional resonance of humanity and thus starving it to death, or both, doesn't really matter.

 

The central myth of the Imperial Cult is that the Emperor suffers on the Golden Throne to safeguard humanity. My interpretation is that the Emperor has spent 10,000 years in stalemate because any being arrogant enough to believe they can defeat Chaos would be prideful enough to refuse to concede when they've lost.

 

The point isn't to save humanity from misery, because the Imperium creates more long, drawn-out suffering over countless generations than extinction at the hands of Chaos would cause, or even from annihilation, because there's absolutely no prospect of victory no matter how many Primarchs come back to reveal secret military projects.

 

The point is the Emperor's incapable of admitting he failed. He's held on for 10,000 years because his arrogance won't let him realise there's no way out.

But the Emperor has admitted that He's failed. Also, things like Arvida's vision pretty much confirm he'll be suffering on the Throne.