 The past is a many-splendid and dreadful thing, for within its deepest and darkest reaches, lurks knowledge that, would simply, could shatter the world. It has been noted by some, in some cases recently and very deliberately, that one's actions, both personally and as an oculus investigatus of the Logos Historica Vertia, risk opening up that which is best left closed. Like the Pandorica of the ancient Greek and mythic tracts, I shall damn creation with my actions, all because my own curiosity cannot be sated. It is not something I am unaware of, despite what the Ordo Hereticus may believe. My Librarium is a dangerous place, and I am not referring to its less than stable construction, or position beneath what I can only assume is half a planet-crust deep of rock crit. No, it is a place containing such a plethora of knowledge, known only to the most select of the select, that where its mere existence become known beyond that smallest of circles, it would invite a full-scale pergation task force to redact not only the material herein, but my own life besides. The Logos' operations are known, yes, but the material we are oft mandated to scrutinize and record, well, they are not. They are of natures that would damn those without our clearance level, for even being aware of, let alone mentioning. They are, to the wider Imperium, to the uncountable billions of humanity's flock, heresy most foul. For what they reveal about the past directly contradicts the innumerable lies the flock are daily, nay, hourly told, all in the name of preserving their sanity, and preventing their being drawn into the morass of temptations eldritch that ever claw at the scheme of our world from the halls beyond. But my role remains, and my remit remains, and while I ever continue to exercise the most strident caution in secrecy, I will not waver in my commitment to the chronicling of that which the luminaries of ages past have deemed, through their senseless zealotry, should be heretical when it is vital, profane when it is pious, blasphemous when it is priceless beyond reckoning. My previous studies upon the ancient epochs of humanity, the dark age of technology, and what potentially lay even before that, have thus far gone unremarked upon by certain viewers of these records, something I am not unaware of, may hap the eyes of the Inquisition do not consider them by their conjecturing and broad strokes, especially sacrilegious. Let us hope that that leniency will continue with this one, for the Oculus is about to cast his eye into the depths of the impossibly distant past. As a recently uncovered scrap of info-fiche that has found its way into my possession, has opened a line of inquiry I should wish to follow, as far as one may. Know then, that this is a record of the distant past as committed departement by one keeper creepiest, of the men of gold, and the men of stone, and the men of iron, and the dreadful implications of the existence of all three. Recently uncovered, and delivered to me by adepts of the Adeptus Terra, I now hold in my possession a document that purports to be the surviving history of the ancient past, before even the dark age of technology that preceded the horrors of the Age of Strife. It is apparently committed to paper, in 993 and 41, by the Keeper of the Library Sanctus here upon Holy Terra, a master Cripias, the successor of Master Phineas, himself the successor of Master Shediel, and so on and so forth for 836 generations of succession. This is for one a fascinating revelation, if it be true, for one does not know of any such place upon Terra, or within the boundaries of the palace, either inner or outer. This is not in and of itself enough to disqualify the source, however. If there is one thing I have learned in my life upon the throne world, it is that there has existed organizations, sects, cults, offices, bureaus, societies, institutes, ordos, and departmentos whose existences have simply been forgotten about, whether through clerical error, deliberate obfuscation, or simply the grinding passage of time, coupled with the sheer enormity of Terra and the Imperium. It is quite possible that this Library Sanctus does indeed exist, and has as storied a history as the document claims. I shall attempt to verify this independently, but considering this is Terra, I do not expect to have much luck in that regard. The document raises one's eyebrows, and indeed I'm sure the eyebrows of many who will parse this very record is the claim that Keeper Cripias makes subsequent to his statement of lineage. Their lifelong goal has been, and has always been, a full and true compilation of the history of the human species, and that the Keeper himself has within his own lifetime, being granted the task of completing it by none other than the God-Emperor himself. Before we examine that particular section, further context is needed. The Keeper notes that he is the last of his kind, that the lineage of the Library Sanctus shall end with him, hence the commitment of its ultimate knowledge to parchment. Additionally notes, rather crucially in this humble chronicler's opinion, that the tradition of the Library has been one of oral record-keeping, not written. I can see the virtue of such a thing. It should not be necessarily a shock to one's acolytes that such a tradition of historical oratory could have persisted within the Imperium. After all, are you not all transcribing my own words into true and noble parchment? Noble vellum, more resilient than simple paper, impossible to tamper with once committed, cheaper than data stacks and certainly less prone to memetic corrosion than cogitator banks. Parchments upon parchment's upon which the wheels of the Imperium turn, while its production and usage may necessarily scale to a size that verges upon insanity. Is it not worth it for the recording of purest data and most sacred history? May have this particular order took this one step further, that only through the harnessing of that most unique and sacred of things the human mind could the most genuine veracity of the past be found? Perhaps I am indulging in the sin of romance, however. The human mind is capable of wondrous purity, but also corruption most dreadful, as we all well know. Given the nature of this Library's keeper and their devotion to their craft, it would make sense to take Keeper Krippias' statement about his god-emperor-given task allegorically, as opposed to literally. He does his work through us, his mortal servants, but rarely directly. It is likely the last Keeper was interpreting the signs he was seeing, as the Emperor bidding him to become the Great Compiler. And it was certainly true that at the close of the 41st millennium there was much in the way of potential signs for any who wished to interpret them. In order for one to grasp the scope of the Keeper's tale, one truly must relate it through oratory. I hope that the order of the Library Sanctus will forgive its commitment to any medium other than their own voices, but one also hopes that they would see it as a necessary step for the preservation of such knowledge in as dire a time as this. And so it was that in the first age of man, the Golden Age, there was the Emperor Unseen and Unheralded, as he prepares the old earth for the coming of mankind, and he watches and he waits. He is joined by the first men of the Golden Race, fine of limb and strong of mind, yet still the Emperor is content to wait in shadow. To watch and learn from mankind, the Golden Race spreads across the face of old earth, multiplying and establishing order and civilization upon the anarchy of nature. In time, the second men of the Stone Race appear, and in their wake come many miracles and marvels of technology that strengthen the stone men's power, but are also harnessed by those of the Golden Race. Although physically inferior to the Golden Race and not of philosophical temperament and disposition, the stone men have in them the conjurations of great artifices and mechanisms. In time, the Golden Race looks to the stars to expand their dominion. The Stone Race builds great machines of power that send both men of stone and men of gold into the ether. However, once the burgeoning race of mankind has taken its first steps into the greater cosmos, the Golden Race dwindles in influence through their dependence upon the artifices of the Stone Race. This, the Golden Age, comes to an end, and the stone men prevail. Here, the Keeper adds an addendum that, through the library Sanctus's calculations, drawn from the most distant and archaic records, have through Constellar Comparison, accounting for significant warp vagaries and stellar drift, dated the end of the Golden Age at 20,000 years previous to the present, at approximately the 20th to 22nd millennium. The record continues, for the next 5,000 years the Stone Race lives through the Dark Age of Technology. Little can be determined from the Dark Age of Technology, for the majority of existing records concerning that period are gathered in the Liberarius Omnis of Mars and none outside the highest ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus can gain access past its most determined guardians. Keeper Malrubius tried once, but to no avail. We have surmised that during the Dark Age of Technology, the men of stone created the men of iron to help them in their building of their great empire. At first, the iron men are as servants, willing to do the bidding of their masters with no thoughts. However, the iron men, as all creatures do, evolve and grow until they are the equal of the Stone Race, and beside each other they set about conquering the galaxy. The Dark Age of Technology is an era of machines and artificial devices used by the Stone Men and later the Iron Men in their endeavors. Many of the technical marvels that the priesthood of Mars sustain can be traced to their origins in the Dark Age of Technology, and it is at the end of this period that the great organization now known as the Adeptus Mechanicus was founded. During the Dark Age of Technology, the austere ancestors of the Imperium's Navus Nobility are born, and through their unique prowess, mankind forges through the stars. Weapons of great destruction cower the aggression of alien enemies, pushing back the frontiers of mankind's dominions. The end of the Dark Age of Technology is the most obscure region of mankind's evolutionary tale. For whatever reasons and differences in ideology, the Stone Men and the Iron Men fell to warring with each other. The Iron Men are possessed of no soul and anathema to any true man. The Stone Men in their final acts of self-preservation annihilate the Iron Men who have turned from ally to foe, and even those of the Iron Race who retain their former loyalties to their one-time masters are destroyed in the fire a crucible of battle. Still the Emperor, in his eternal wisdom, awaits the moment to reveal the true path to mankind's destiny. Thus the start of the Age of Strife is heralded. The Age of Strife sees the collapse of the ancient empire built by the Stone Men. Mankind is split asunder. There is no race of man just warring factions contending with each other in the direst perils the galaxy could offer. Seeing humanity's weakness, alien dominance grows in power once again. The arms of the Stone Men left to ruin, the protection of the Iron Men destroyed in the last years of the Dark Age. For five millennia the human race exists in a twilight of its former greatness, bickering and fighting for the scant resources at hand. With no guiding will, no manifest destiny of lordship, mankind is left in turmoil. Even earth, the bedrock upon which humanity's empire was founded, is gripped in the throes of a generation-long internecine war. The foul aliens who had been held back by the might of the Iron Men and the Stone Men surge forth from their heathens and lairs, destroying mankind's defenses. Killing or enslaving the emperor's wards, mankind is engulfed by a plague of mutation, physical deviance and those possessed of psychic talents appear throughout the galaxy, bringing more havoc with them. But no overreaching authority, the lost souls and psychers sprawl unchecked across the human race. It is at this time that the emperor reveals his true nature and sets about his plans of deliverance from anarchy. The last 10,000 years we have been in the glorious age of the Imperium, the reign of the beneficent emperor of mankind. Using his vast intellect and knowledge of ages past, the emperor creates a race of warriors to quell the warring factions on earth, renaming our homeworld Terra and affirming its place as the center of the known galaxy. Having established rulership over mankind's birthworld, the emperor sets about the recreation of mankind's righteous fate. With his legions of space marines, the emperor leads the great crusade of reconquest. It is a long and arduous war, but world after world, seeing the emperor the rightful ruler of mankind, they fall to his service. The space marines, now numbering in their many thousands, establish outposts in the furthest reaches of the galaxy and from these bases on asteroids and moons and planets, launch forays into the darkness, bringing the light and word of the emperor with them. Through this turmoil, the base treachery of the war master and the sacrifice of the emperor, the contact with the noble offices of the priesthood of Mars, the establishment of the Navist nobility and other noteworthy assemblages that we now take for granted, as well as the purges of mutants and psychers the imperium is forged in blood and death on a thousand thousand worlds, the rightful and just rule of the emperor is reasserted. And so it is, ten thousand years since the great crusade, we are able to live under the guiding light of the emperor. We have the guns of the imperial navy, imperial guard and adeptus astartes to guard against betrayal and foul aliens. The chronicle of this last keeper is, as one's acolytes can no doubt see, commendably pious and quite fascinating. His elitry is notable if his few errors sometimes jarring. The adeptus mecanicus was not, as we all well know, founded in the dark age of technology but sees its gestation in the darkest days of the age of strife, millennia later. Some of the information is genuinely any scholar's guess, such as the date of the end of the golden age of humanity before the steady decay of the dark age of technology. The revelation about the nature of that time, that time so utterly occluded from the sight of those of us in this present era, well they demand scrutiny. The keeper alludes to three main groups, the men of gold, stone and iron. This is the first reference one has come across for the former two, but interestingly not the third. By the records telling, the men of gold would harness the power and capabilities of the men of stone, but importantly the latter was not begat by the former. They grew separately and apart, rising upon old earth in tandem. It would appear the men of gold or a subset of humanity that are highly distinct from the rest of the species, albeit of a smaller number. The keeper refers to them as fine of limb and strong of mind, and based on what scraps we have of this era of human evolution, it is highly probable that they are ultimately a form of genetically engineered humanity. Perhaps the first ever stably genhanced subspecies to become extant. Indeed, they may have been humanity's first mutation, a potential evolutionary branch brought about by the changing ecosystem of old earth. Whatever their origin, it clearly rose to a position of ascendancy and in doing so, bent the capabilities of the men of stone to their will. This latter group was apparently highly adept with technology, very much appearing to as the precursors of our glorious mechanicus, and perhaps the original founders of Sacred Mars, being referenced as one of the architects of the first stellar exodus. They propelled themselves and their golden masters to the stars, although in doing so it clipped the golden men, causing the latter to wane in power in influence as the technology of the men of stone drove the species ever onward and ever outward. It is they, through their science and their technology, who usher in the dark age of technology, an era of unprecedented human advancement, an unmatched human ignorance, for in their colossal arrogance, the men of stone gave birth, the queeting unto the human race, the men of iron. If any of you have parsed one's record upon the dark age of technology, you will have recognized the keeper's allegorical term for what it really is, a mythic scale name for the truest horror of the dark age of technology, abominable intelligence, the machine that thinks. Not the true and holy cognition of the flesh, but a mind artificial and utterly monstrous for it. The stone men crafted copy minds to mimic their own, to ease their burdens, to run their worlds, to fight their enemies. And for a time, it was good. The races of man and machine flourished and cast back the Xenos empires that threatened them. And from there, well you doubtlessly know the tale. The keeper appears to lay the blame on ideological differences between men of stone and iron as responsible for the machine wars that caused untold ruin to the species, but does point out quite correctly that the men of iron did not possess a true soul that those of us in truest humanity do. The warring ended with the purgation of the men of iron by their own creators, even those who yet remained loyal to the cause of stone. Abominable intelligence was declared just that, abominable, and its creation forever outlawed throughout the realms of man. But the damage had been done. The empire of the stone men was collapsing, and the enemies were both at the door and within the house already. For further context, the Chronicle of the Last Keeper must be taken in tandem with an altogether obscure source. Passed on to me by a colleague, it is apparently a legendary tale originating from a bondsman of the Navus Imperialis, told to a shipmate during transit, and lightly further rendered into the sort of pleasing naval mythic legend that propagates so well amongst shipboard ratings and crewmen. I shall relate what I have of it below. Once long ago, man lived on just one island. The broad ocean surrounded him, and he believed himself alone. In time, man's stature grew, and he caught sight of other isles far off across the deep ocean. Since he had seen everything on his island, climbed every peak and looked under every stone, he became curious about the other islands and tried to reach them. He soon found the ocean's too deep and cold for him to get far, now nearly a hundredth of the way to the next island. So man returned and put his hand to other things for an age. But in time, food and water and air ran short on man's island, and he looked to the far islands again. Because he could not bear the cold of the ocean deeps, he fashioned men of stone to go in his place, and stone men fashioned men of steel to become their hands and eyes. And the stone men went forth with their servants and swam in the deep oceans. They found many strange things on the far islands, but none as strange or as wicked as the things that swam in the depths between them. Ancient, hungry things, older than man himself. But these beasts of the deep hungered for the true life of man, not the half-life of stone, so the stone men swam unmolested. At first all was well, and the men of stone planted man's seed on many islands. And in time, man learned to travel the oceans himself, riding in stone ships to keep out the cold and the hunger of the beasts. All was well, and man spread to many islands across the ocean, such that some even forgot how they came to be there, and that they had ever come from just one island at all. The tale apparently winds on, telling of how the stone men became estranged from humanity by their journeys through the void, leading further to a time of great conflict when the men of steel turned against their stone masters, and mankind was riven asunder by wars. A thousand worlds were scoured by the ancient terrible weapons of those days, before the men of stone were overthrown, and a million more burned as flesh fought against steel. This tale was of no true interest to me until the revelation of the last keeper's record, and the similarities are stark, it goes without saying. It is the second reference to the men of stone one has encountered, and from two vastly different sources as to put paid to the possibility of an outright fabrication on the part of either. The tale of the bondsmen does what the chronicle of the keeper does not, account for the presence of entities of the warp and their existence, but does so in a way that is truly fascinating and indeed revelatory. According to it, the intelligences of the immaterium were not interested in the men of stone, for they did not possess the same life or vitality as the rest of humanity. As we all know, the demonic creatures of that most foul of dimensions pray upon one thing, the soul of the living. The light of one's very life for their sustenance. The passage of the men of stone through their dimension did not elicit such hunger, is something that by its very nature invites deep contemplation and speculation. If one may indulge in such, one believes this points to the men of stone being at least partially artificial in nature. The adeptus mecanicus has a long and hallowed tradition of cyberization and mechanical enhancement of their human forms, but strict delineation between the human and the machine intelligence, regarding the latter, quite correctly, as abomination. No matter the modifications that may be made upon the brain of an adept, its core must remain organic. Anything beyond this is heretical and against the most holy of mecanicus dogma. But, as we are no doubt aware, the men of stone were of a different era. One typified by a belief that in the fullest and most unrestrained harnessing of technology, will the destiny of the species be found? What if they took to modifying their own minds? What if they, through means unspeakably foul, imprinted their human intelligences onto the cold, unyielding bodies of the machine? One does not simply refer to the transferring of a brain from a organic body to a mechanical one, like the servitor or the dreadnought. No, no, I fear the truth is far more horrible. Imagine the mind of a man of stone inhabiting a whole starship or a planetary new sphere. Imagine, throne, imagine a collective of such minds working in disgusting, gestalt tandem, yet separate identities within the whole. These ideas may seem absurd, but no ye that we call at the dark age of technology for a reason. The blasphemous horrors of that era were manifold and likely far beyond our ken, and rightly so. With minds so utterly torn apart, rent asunder, they were rendered unseed to the things of the warp. May have they were closer to machine than human, even. Maybe the passage of millennia, constant divestment from different elements of humanity, maybe it rendered them abominable in their own way. Code, as hallowed as the Mechanicus considers it, is as prone to corruption as biology. Perchance after thousands of years of creeping and compounding errors or data evolution, the end product is something for which the lines between organic and artificial have ceased to be. There is, of course, an alternate hypothesis here. The stone men were not, in fact, men at all, but rather machine intelligences of their own right. Why then, you may ask, do neither records speak of their gestation as such? Allow me to posit. A dreadful fusion of man and machine. Machine intelligences piloting human bodies like the princeps pilots a titan. A hideous symbiosis, beginning first as augmentation before effectively becoming a newer and altogether more unholy subset of the human race. This would account for why the tale of the bondsmen refers to the men of stone as possessing a half-life, and why the Chronicle of the Keeper specifically refers to the men of iron as solace. It would also corroborate a bizarre turn of phrase held within the first record. The stone men have in them the conjurations of great artifices and mechanisms. Before this idea came upon me, one considered the Keeper a speaking metaphorically. For in just the same way their golden compatriots were of a philosophical temperament, the men of stone were of a technical one. Not so anymore. No. For this sentence takes on an altogether more dreadful character. The men of stone were truly half-humans, formed of a despicable union of man and machine. Their very name is indeed then rendered more literal, for they were truly men birthed of stone. The silicate wafers employed by the Adeptus Mechanicus' war robots are, after all, derivatives of the silicon pathways that once so despicably aped the human brain. Sciences both genetic and technologic, wielded to create this half-breed race that would serve as the artificers and pioneers, builders and researchers, those concerned with the broadening of the species' possibilities, but so completely unhindered by the morality and humanity that they had now excised. For they were, after all, not of philosophical temperament or disposition. Imagine. Humans who could excise all that they desired in order to render themselves as unto the sacred machine, but in doing so, utterly defiling the purity of both. Perhaps then it is no wonder that the men of iron, the abominable intelligences wrought by those stone hands, eventually rose against their masters. Per the introduction to the Emerald Testament, that suppressed work of the techno-archaeologist Sinicius Thorn from M39, fools have asked, why did the dark age of technology end in the fall of humanity, and other fools answer back folly or pride or the worship of progress, as if these things alone had any meaning? The answer, as the wise know, is simple. It is finally because humanity had the arts at their disposal to make their dreams reality, and the dreams of humanity have ever been the darkest things in all creation. What one must ultimately muse to at this point is the fates of these three groups. One would hope, given their descriptions herein, and the long, terrible arc the fate of our species underwent whilst our fates were in their hands, that they had all met their ends long, long ago. But, as you may well know, the galaxy is an incomprehensibly vast space, and there exists within that space many dark and hidden corners where lost things often come to dwell, or deliberately seek out to remove themselves from the eyes of others. If certain reports issuing from the station of precipice, that ramshackled den of villainy orbiting the newly emerged Blackstone Fortress are to be believed, we may not be as free from the presence of the men of iron as we would like ourselves to believe. Of the men of stone? Well, I must add that I am about to relate comes from the mouth of a man deemed heretic by the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the recording of it should not be considered an endorsement of those beliefs. It is my job to question, and given the nature of the men of stone as discussed earlier, well you shall see for yourselves. For his removal from office, Mechanicus historical Majos in question, was well known amongst his colleagues for his persistent pursuant of the origins of the silica animus, the dwells within modern imperial battle automata. In doing so, it is said he even managed to persuade the Synod to grant him access to the oft forbidden records of the ancient legio cybernetica, pursuant to the operation and formation of said during the times of the great heresy. Subsequently, he vanished into the catacombs of Mars, a subject for a full chronicle in their own right, and was expected never to return, or few do. To the shock of many, he emerged several years later, irrecovably changed, and speaking of the machine spirits present in our technology, in ways the Mechanicus simply could not allow. According to the rantings, he had attempted to promulgate throughout the Martian new sphere. The machine spirits we all well know, and beseech each and every time we harness the power of our technology, are in fact shards of ancient intelligences, remnants clinging to perilous existence within millennia old STC patterns, eternally replicated and manufactured, but never in totality. Slivers, billions of them, fragmented splinters of a million machine minds scattered throughout thousands of years, across millions of devices, encased in maddening multifaceted prisons across infinite space. A single stone man, cut into a thousand pieces, each occupying something entirely different, reduced to a sort of idiot mindlessness. One piece dwells in the auspex array of an adeptus, a starty's helm, another within a rendering cogitator at a nutrient reclamation facility, neither remembering anything of their past or purpose, mute half something's dwelling only within a present mundanity. What an utterly wretched existence. Naturally, such supposition was quickly and quietly and very definitively quashed, but given the nature of the men of stone as entities who had potentially diffused intelligences, perhaps there is some truth to it? Could our machine spirits be sections of those ancient humans, trapped within our cogitators, our lumen systems, our vox networks, our lasguns? Are we an empire whose technology is merely built upon the bones of our foul ancestors? I provide this merely as supposition for discourse, nothing more. Pray to whomever views this do not let your mind wander into such foul places. They are best reserved for those of us who know how to tread them, for if you do not, therein lies only damnation. There remains one exceptionally glaring question amidst a sea of admittedly also glaring questions, the men of gold. Even what scraps we know of the men of stone and iron provide ground for academic conjecture at the very least, but of the men of gold, our material may as well be apocryphal. Only the record of the last keeper even names them as such, and a scant little else. He notes that they were fine of limb and strong of mind, yes, but crucially that they joined the emperor as he waited on scene, watching the long arc of our species for his moment of ascension to his rightful place as sole ruler of humanity. Could it be perhaps that these men of gold were in fact humans of a similar character to that of the emperor? Is fine of limb and strong of mind a reference to perhaps a genetically engineered subspecies or an extraordinarily beneficial mutations frame? Have they always been amongst us dwelling undetected, only choosing to emerge prior to our first cellar exodus, while the emperor chose to remain hidden? If so, why did they lapse into obscurity as the men of stone rose as the last keeper seems to believe? What happened to them? Not for the men of gold, the fires of a damnation war, no, but seemingly a slow drain to relevancy. This, if one may say, does not seem fitting. Such a race would not go quietly into the night, especially not if they were compatriots of the future master of mankind. No, no, this will require further inquiry, further excavation of the ancient to the last for the forbidden. During one's examination of the shall we say more esoteric aspects of the great heresy, there has been a word that has dogged the most explained, the most miraculous, and most reason defying events. A word that appears to promise revelations myriad about our species, our history, even our god emperor, if one can determine its truest meaning. A word that may yet unlock the secrets of the men of gold and of the ancient past, perpetual, such a lone archaic word, and yet it has appeared with a disturbing regularity amongst the most secretive of texts dredged from the depths of the most forbidden of archives, given what it appears to portend to and taking into account all that one has related here concerning the legends of those ancient humans. It seems beyond doubt that connections exist between all these strands cast a drift across gulfs of time. All it needs is answers. I thank you for your patience in considering my musings worthy of inclusion in your studies. I promise worth, if not now then in future, one only needs the time. And until such a time as my duties permit such a indulgent work as this, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Keep the lights running and the scripts flowing.