Men of Iron are also mentioned (briefly, not really in much more detail than the postulations here) in Creatures Anathema. However there is discussion on the Silica Animus.

Cifer said:

The tau went from medieval to hitech in 2000 years. Humanity peaked in the Golden Age of Technology, around 15,000 AD. Neither of them could destroy stars, reshape planets etc. The eldar weren't technologically stagnant, they controlled the whole galaxy for a very, very long time (with an apparent apex at ~1,000,000 bce). They kept the orks suppressed which allowed other races to flourish. If the eldar had simply pushed orks out of their empire, all the non eldar planets would have been overrun by them, which would have killed humanity before they even left earth.

So they clearly didn't stagnate.

Hellebore

It's all about GORT!!! (from the first day the earth stood still not any crappy remakes)

Clatu! Verata! Nicto! (Or however you write it) FTW!

llsoth said:

<TANGENT> It's Klaatu, actually. And it's all one sentence - it means, "Klaatu said not to blow up the earth." More or less. And in the short story, his name's Gnut. </TANGENT>

As for stagnation, conquest of the majority of the galaxy does not mean they didn't stagnate. Hell, the Imperium started stagnating after they conquored most of the galaxy, and IIRC they mention that the Eldar basically just stopped advancing meaningfully long ago, be it because of a lfie of leasure or because the fall of the Eldar caused them to lose so much technology that they've been playing catch-up in their spare time (of which they have little).

They clearly could have stagnated, given that a million years ago (or so) they were in the same position that the Imperium is in now.

I accept the way humanity's technology progressed, it dosn't seem "that sudden" that they rose from squat to golden age within a period of about 15 thousand years (don't quote me on the length of time, i could have sworn i saw '15k' in this article). After all, look at our current progress. Look at our own real world technology advances since 'the enlightenment' (lets sat 1700)). We've gone from horse n' buggy to smart car and space shuttle in about 300 years. Our technology is evolving exponentially (where will we be in the next 100 years much less 14, 700).

Even without rare few people who's vast intelects managed to come up with tons of working ideas and marvels (Archimedes for example) or with an awsome ability to backwards engineer tech (surely the emporer had done so durning the course of his atleast forty thousand year existance -Mechanium showed us that he was a knight at one point of his life after all- such as near the end of his pre-entombment life when he had nearly cracked the secrets of the Eldar webway) the imperium would have advanced to its level as quickly as it had.

As far as the Eldar though we don't know if they were still making true advances in technology when the eye of terror opened up and killed most of them or if they had already gone as far as their science could take them; however in the current time frame of the Imperium they are definetly stagnet, attempting to reclaim or just hold onto what they currently have.

As far as the Men of Iron go, I'd proably make the 'main model' of them that your acolytes face atleast as tough as a space marine. The lore indicates that they concoured huge swaths of the galaxy while under man's control so I assume that they were both tough and mass produced. Too were they were a (amongst others) significant cause of the fall of mankind in the dark age of technology when so much was lost, though humanity did destroy them as a threat.

I imagine them to look like machines not servitors, i'd imagine the fleshless terminators or hulking humanoid robots a pair of meters tall, perhaps 3 meters like a space marine.

I would say that there's multiple patterns, just like a lasgun. From self aware buttlers to basic task cargo-lifters, to our 'main model space marine-combat pattern' to heavy models like self-aware space marine dreadnaughts.

Potentially they are controled or organized by a powerful logic-engine or data loom (like a general) their heritical and foul machine spirits full of hate for humanity.

Perhaps a group of logicians have uncovered an STC pattern containing how to make Men of Iron, perhaps there's an abandoned military base of long ago within some world where they are, or were laying dormant. Perhaps a ship containing them has recently returned from the time warping effects of warp travel. I like the idea of rogue traders finding a derilict or slow-ship (i forget the 40k termionlogy of a ship that travels system to system without the ability to warp travel) and being over run by these machines after giving out a distress signal. Your acolytes find clues as to what happened, and amongst the logs or trajectory of the derilict or slow ship a potential planet to which they headed for some ghastly perpous (making more of themselves, fleeing to make a world of their own, finding a hidden human killing bio-weapon) (like a life-eater virus that can lay dormant and infect worlds like the common cold).

Above all they can't be trusted, they are stains to the electromagnetic sense of the machine god, their leaders the satan/ horus ex machina

Kryton.

I think given that it was back sometime around M21 to M26 when they where running around when the age of strife first started, you could probably make them whatever you wanted as there isn't much on them at all. The Men of Stone made them as servents to help them build the empire of man and eventually they attained the status of equals before deciding for mostly equally unknown reasons to start fighting.

It might be fair enough to compare it to the Butlerian Jihad of Dune as 40k copies that fairly closely in a lot of places. Stone could suggest a mineral based AI from some kind of crystal/semiconductor elements, like silicon and your iron men based of metals, it could suggest that the ferros based nature of human red blood cells being part of it too if you want the hybrid machine/humans.

Could have even been Cymeks? Which in some ways are a bit like servitors in 40k and played a slightly similar role in the B-Jihad.

The tau went from medieval to hitech in 2000 years. Humanity peaked in the Golden Age of Technology, around 15,000 AD. Neither of them could destroy stars, reshape planets etc. The eldar weren't technologically stagnant, they controlled the whole galaxy for a very, very long time (with an apparent apex at ~1,000,000 bce). They kept the orks suppressed which allowed other races to flourish. If the eldar had simply pushed orks out of their empire, all the non eldar planets would have been overrun by them, which would have killed humanity before they even left earth.

The tau are pretty fine - if we assume medieval to mean about 1000 AD, 2000 years of development would put them in our year 3000, which sounds about right, especially since they developed their "world government" directly with the arrival of the Ethereals. The Imperium already was in the "ridiculously advanced" future, but that doesn't matter too much since they've lost it again. Is your statement "Neither of them could destroy stars, reshape planets etc" referring to humanity in 40k or in 15k? Because I'd consider the latter one highly improbable - the modern day Imperium is capable of destructive terraforming (aka Exterminatus), so with all the DAoT-Tech "normal" terraforming should certainly have been possible.

With the Eldar, I was referring to technological stagnation - meaning they didn't develop new stuff all over their race's existence. A race that has been scientifically active for a million years would most likely be beyond what our imagination can make up.