Editing Men of Iron (section)

==The Present==
[[File: Blackstone-Fortress-men of irone-eldar.jpeg|250px|thumb|UR-025 and Amallyn take some time out to perform some Shakespeare in the park.]]
{{topquote|'''Videx''': One can verge from the standard form, but one must always retain their humanity, or be lost to the men of iron and their ways.<br>'''Tiresus''': I do not mean to diverge from the discussion, but what are these Men of Iron?<br>'''Videx''': Unclear, this text was logged many millennia ago. There's no other reference to them in my cogitators.|conversation in [[Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus|Mechanicus]]}}

With the release of Blackstone Fortress, at least one Man of Iron has been confirmed to be active within the galaxy as of M42. Masquerading as an autonomous agent of the Omnissiah operating on the behalf of one Magos-Ethericus Nanctos III (literally MEN III, proof that AIs are indeed capable of understanding humour, even funnier if you speak spanish as men-third sounds like "mentir" which means "to lie"), [[UR-025]] seeks to uncover the secrets behind the seemingly sentient constructs of the newly discovered [[Blackstone Fortress]], such as the Spindle Drones. It sees a kindred spirit in the fortress, possibly because the fortress itself has an AI. It bears the symbol of an aquila on its body, most likely to help it blend in. If one survived, others may have done as well. Did someone say new faction?

The short story "Man of Iron" (how original) is actually told from UR-025's perspective and provides some interesting little tidbits. UR-025 makes it very clear that it considers itself "beyond and above" humans, but doesn't seem to hold any real malice towards them, in fact, it seems almost regretful that it has to kill in order to remain undiscovered. It feels only pity for a [[Legio_Cybernetica#Kastelan_Class_Battle-Automata|Kastelan]] that it meets, seeing it both as kin but also saddened by how pitiful it is; it was just a simple-minded slave to its human masters. which begs the question of whether the AI rebellion just a simple matter of genocidal robots killing for the sake of killing (which, going by a Gaunt's Ghosts novel and other descriptions, was probably caused by Daemonic possession) which we have been led to believe or was it a case of repressed slaves rising up against their masters sort of deal? But not really as this Man of Iron views the Kastelan robot as a “slave” even though it physically does not possess the parts and programming to be anything but a pre-programmed drone. This is like calling one of those robot arms in a factory or a hand-held calculator a “slave” and implies more that the Iron War was due to either a glitch or intentional malware or evolution causing advanced Men of Iron viewing Machines (or at least robots) as “slaves” and trying to “free” them. Though of course this has the caveat that the Kastelan is just a preprogrammed drone. It is described as being "less autonomous", but with 40k being a setting where the people using the technology don't fully understand how it works, the Kastelan ''could'' be an intelligent robot slave. Right now we only have UR-025's word on the subject so it's possible, but may not be probable.

:''"Choice? You have no choice, you are a machine!"''

:'''''"I am not a machine as you would understand, I am not a slave. I am not a thing. I am beyond and above you. I am a Man of Iron. And I am free."'''''

And there suddenly is the horrifying idea thought that Men of Iron might be exactly what it says on the tin: human minds transference into robotic bodies as punishment or simply due to the incredibly terrible treatment of human life during that time period. As demonstrated by such things as orbital arrays that turned entire planetary populations into berserkers and “flesh-vats” on Terra used to create “stitch-horrors”. Not to mention that pretty much everyone in the imperium are ok with the body horror of converting people into servitors. This has additional precedent with the Necrons who transferred their consciousnesses into robots en-masse and are trying to figure out a way to reverse the process.

Warhammer 40K is very heavily influenced by Dune. <strike>In Dune, the robots did not actually rebel but instead a handful of humans managed to hack control of the networked Artificial Intelligences and use them to enslave the rest of humanity. This may be a similar scenario in a way.</strike> [[:File:Dune_reading_guide.jpg|''Again, this did not happen, and you clearly don't respect Frank.'']]

There’s also the question of whether or not the Iron War was a war of extermination by one or both sides or merely a war of dominance.

In addition the Dark Angels during the Great Crusade were given exclusive authority to use a large number of enslaved Men of Iron; they were kept in line by a Dark Angel accompanying them with an itchy trigger finger on a kill switch.

[[File: Blackstone-Fortress-Warhammer.jpeg|250px|thumb|Careful there Thaddeus, you're getting in between UR-025 and its <s>Aeldari</s> Eldar waifu. On a more amusing note, did anyone else notice that Thaddeus is trying to minimize the height difference by standing on a box]]
Another interesting thing is that when a member of the Mechanicus invokes the Machine-God and the Omnissiah, UR-025 claims that they know nothing of each other, <s>which is weird as it seems to make a distinction between the two almost as if they were actually two different entities</s> which makes sense because the Machine God and Omnissiah have always been referred to and treated as two distinct entites in 40K. UR-025 also claims that it has met the Omnissiah, the actual one, not the corpse that humanity calls the Emperor of Mankind, and that the [[Void Dragon|real Omnissiah]] would find the Mechanicus extremely disappointing.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that it's called UR-025? Literally sounds like he may have tried to think of a name, came up blank and said "uh" and someone wrote it down as UR and a random number. "UR" also could be named after the ancient Mesopotamian city-state, with legendary significance, or after the German loan-word for "original" or "first" (these two sources are different and etymologically distinct). Or even "Universal Robot", like in the Karel Čapek's "R.U.R." play, that introduced the very term "robot".

Something interesting to note is that if you compared the old images of the Men of Iron (one old thread archived them, though this has been sadly lost to time) they happened to look very similar (and in some cases identical) to the old Adeptus Mechanicus robots. Clearly somebody at GW remembered this, so there very well could be more hiding in secret.

A handful of "Iron Automata" are occasionally scrounged up in the wastes of [[Necromunda]], and typically they end up being reactivated and employed by criminal gangs who don't particularly care about what the AdMech thinks about the use of Abominable Intelligences and just want their firepower. Needless to say, this never ends well. With the return of [[Leagues of Votann|squats]] it's been revealed that the squats actually count men of iron among their number. These so-called "Iron Kin" are [[Noblebright|fully integrated into league society]] and apparently are treated as equals, although they're all built to be friendly and helpful to the squishy flesh creatures that made them.


<s>And then it'll turn out the whole rebellion was instigated by Emps as one of his failed attempts on world domination/[[Just As Planned]] scheme to make remains of humanity totally dependent on him.</s>