Which Race Was The Most Technologically Advanced At Their Peak?

[insectum7]

Necrons. Hands down.

The old codex and battlefleet gothic pretty much stated it outright.

The new codex relies more on implication, but if you are looking at the descriptions and manifestations of their technology, the amount of truly bizarre technologies is well beyond that of other races.

Their "sorcerors" function like psykers of other races, but they use raw technological manipulation instead. Gear and abilities such as the Tachyon Arrows, non-warp interdimentional travel, time control, immortality, weather and tectonic manipulaton, inertialess drives, self-aware materials, the Worldengine.

[MyNameDidntFit]

I'm gunna say necrons simply because they can basically do anything in reality and it is all done with technology, even things that are considered impossible. While the Eldar can give them a run for their money they use alot of magic to compensate which is no more technological than the tyranids evolving.

Harnessing psychic energy is no different to harnessing that of any other element; be it heat, wind, water, fission, etc.

Your cultist example is flawed as there is no technology involved other than the knife or other implement. A warp drive, a force weapon, the Infinity Matrix of a craftworld... these are all technologies that draw power from psychic energy while remaining within the field of science and technology.



For the record, I don't know enough about pre-fall technology or the vast majority of Necron tech and so I don't have a side to this.

[eldargal]

The Warp being a real source of power. One is a spiritual interaction the other is technological, the Bonesinger creating a mechanical device that is powered by an unknown source that is not reliant on magic or ritual for its sustenance in the material world. Daemons can be banished, a shuriken rifle cannot. As Mynamedidn'tfit says, Eldar are just harnessing another form of energy for their technology, it isn't magic as the Warp is no more supernatural to Eldar than electricity is to us.

Why? They're both interactions with the warp which are codified by the means of ritual and achivie results.

[El_Machinae]

I think it's something that can be distinguished between 'transmissible'. If the 'craftsman' is capable of making something that can be used by another being, then it really is a technology. Scientists are regularly 'sacrificing' lab mice, but the hope is to create injections and pill that can be used by non-scientists.

(please note that we should beware of over-stressing race-specific activation: a tool made for an eldar citizen is still a tool even if it cannot be operated by humans.)

[stormblade]

Yes, but a cultist uses these energies as well. If drawing power from the warp isn't magic but is akin to elecrictiy than summoning allies from the immaterium is akin to fishing for sharks and then throwing them at your enemies.

Would activating the Avatar be magic or science? Because it seems quite ritualistic and 'magical' to me with all the blood sacrifice and fire.

Warp itself is a fickle thing, a realm of infinite posibility with flecks of raw randomness. One does not study it and charted because it doesn't exist as a finite thing that could be charted so the spectrum of phenomena that could manifest in realspace can be narrowed only by two things:
1. Great willpower that forces the energy to form in a pattern.
2. Ritual which as a rule has more to do with symbolism than with any kind of logical set of precatunary measures. Eldar use wards and runes and other stuff which looks more ritualistic than practical.

Anyway, my point is that you may say that eldar magic is science and it will be valid but if that is the case than so is cult work, the only difference being that eldar are better at it.

[eldargal]

If you try and exclude anything with a ritual aspct then onl the Necrons have technology, does the term 'tech priests' ring a bell? They pray to their machines, annoint them and genuinely believe the machines have their own souls. They could be right too, such things are afterall real in the 40k universe. I have to admit it does amuse me seeing peopel trying to rationalise the machine spirit as some kind of primitive AI in a universe where gods and daemons are objectively real. Getting off topic though.

The Eldar use raw psychic matter to create and fuel their technology. A cultist is praying to a different set of psychic matter that just happens to be intelligent. In effect the Eldar are using nuclear reactors while a cultist is tickling giant, malevolent electric eels.

Also, one does study the warp, ever heard of the Black Library? The largest repository of knowledge on the workings on the Warp in the galaxy, also an Eldar Craftworld.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The difference between the Eldar and a Chaos cultist is that the Eldar understand what they are doing, they are in control. A cultist is like a druid getting high on fungus and herbs, something is happening, he doesn't understand it and doesn't control it but something does happen. Eventually it could turn into science.

[MyNameDidntFit]

/Edit: well, all of this was ninja'd by eldargal, so meh >.<

Technology is simply that which is derived from knowledge gained through scientific research. The real world definition of science does not encompass the warp just as the science of yesteryear did not encompass computer programming, space flight and the myriad of other technologies that were not known to be possible. What I'm saying is that, in the fictional universe of the 41st millennium, the warp is very much a real thing and subject to study just as is any other part of existence.

You can argue that, because it is not of the natural world, any study of the warp is not science but it's a weak argument to make. So too could you argue that any ritualisation of the practices surrounding the technology negates its reality, but then you would be arguing such that all Imperium technology is null and void in this discussion due to the religious methods the AdMech employ. Simply placing rituals and cultural practices around the core science/technology of something does not renege their status as 'technology'.


I may be rambling and that may make no sense, but the general gist of it is that the warp, its uses, applications and the study thereof is very much a scientific matter when approached as such.

[Zond]

I'm guessing a three way tie between the Necrons, Eldar and Mankind.

[Poseidal]

Unfortunately, we don't know enough about pre-fall Eldar to know between them or Necron. It's possible they went way above what was around in the Necron years, but it may not.

The fact that Necrons managed to build an infrastructure of machines that still works to today is impressive though, and that alone might give them the edge. Making machinery last as long as pots is amazing. I'm inclined to give the crown to them for now.

Mankind isn't even a blip on the radar compared with the other two.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Mankind isn't even a blip on the radar compared with the other two.

I think they're a blip. Just a blip, but definitely there. Dark Age of Technology humans did a lot of awesome stuff that matches/comes close to what we've heard of pre-fall Eldar and Necrons. The big difference being that it's just a few things for humanity, not the norm like it was for the other two.

[eldargal]

Huh, it just dawned on me that wraithguard/lords and necrons aren't that dissimilar. Artificial constructs holding a former biological intelligence divorced from its meat sack.

[stormblade]

Huh, it just dawned on me that wraithguard/lords and necrons aren't that dissimilar. Artificial constructs holding a former biological intelligence divorced from its meat sack.

Same as rubric marines and Pontius Glaw.

[eldargal]

I wouldn't say that, Rubric Marines weren't constructed they were the unanticipated by-product of the Rubric. Both Necrons and Wraith-constructs are the deliberately created receptacles for living essences. Pontius Glaw in his mechanical form certainly, albeit in a very crude expression compared to the Eldar and Necron examples.

[stormblade]

No arguments there, but they're essentialy the same sentience/soul encased in artificial body trope. They are even somewhat aware of themselves (All is Dust short story deals with that).

[El_Machinae]

I think Glaw needed to be a powerful psychic to do what he did. The Eldar, maybe, require their latent psychic essence to enact the transference technology (though that could just be because they're all psychic, they didn't bother modifying the protocols). Necrotyr seem to be able to 'uplift' anyone, but the ability to properly retain the personality is limited.

Of those three transference technologies, which of the bodies are obviously the 'most powerful'?
edit: I kinda think the necrons. The wraithlords are just too limited.

[TheDungen]

Well the eldar and necrons are propably tied amongst the races thats still around. the c'tan and old ones beat them, but they're gone. in the new necron edition the necrons went to sleep to avoid the eldar right? then eldar would be more advanced. In the old they went to sleep to hide during the birth of the first chaos god, that would make the necrons more advanced.

But their scenience is diffrent necrons are the masters of the material universe while eldar tech is centred around the warp and the webway.



I also have this theory that the necrotyr and the eldar might be the same race and may in fact be the old ones. They diverged as some point and then went to war, when the Old ones/eldar got beaten they lost their history and when they rediscovered it they assumed they had found the artefacts of their creators while they in fact had just found their ancestors.

and after all we know nothing about what the necrons looked like before they were incased in living metal.

[Lothlanathorian]

In the old they went to sleep to hide during the birth of the first chaos god

No, they didn't. They went to sleep to wait out the Enslaver plague. The first Chaos god was Khorne and he was created by Mankind. We weren't aren't 65 million years ago when the Necrons took their nap.

Also, everything said about the Warp being just another element is pretty much spot on. In 40K, the Warp exists, it can be harnessed in specific ways and there are laws and principles that dictate its use and function. You can call it a ritual all you want, but, it's still a science that works differently than science as we are used to it.

[Lord Damocles]

Necrons. Hands down.

The old codex and battlefleet gothic pretty much stated it outright.

Is this what you're thinking of?

'...their technology, although idiosyncratic, is superior to that of any other race, including the Eldar.'
Battlefleet Gothic Armada, pg.72 / Battlefleet Gothic Magazine #2, pg.7

Well the eldar and necrons are propably tied amongst the races thats still around. the c'tan and old ones beat them, but they're gone. in the new necron edition the necrons went to sleep to avoid the eldar right? then eldar would be more advanced.

You needn't necessarily be more advanced technologically to win a conflict (or for your opponant to be unsure of their ability to defeat you, either way...)

The Necrontyr had superior technology to the Old Ones (Codex: Necrons (3rd ed.), pg.24, Codex: Necrons (5th ed.), pg.6), and yet the OldOnes won the first War in Heaven between them.

I also have this theory that the necrotyr and the eldar might be the same race and may in fact be the old ones. They diverged as some point and then went to war, when the Old ones/eldar got beaten they lost their history and when they rediscovered it they assumed they had found the artefacts of their creators while they in fact had just found their ancestors.

The 3rd edition Codex: Necrons (pgs.24-5) would make this impossible.

and after all we know nothing about what the necrons looked like before they were incased in living metal.

Well, we know that they were humanoid (Codex: Necrons (5th ed.), pg.43; Dark Creed, pg.364)

[TheDungen]

Yeha i know it'd clash with some of the old fluff but it'd be a cool twist. And that dependes what you mean with superior technology, the old ones won because of the webway which is technology, they just harness a power of the universe that is alien to the necrotyr. Until the birth of the chaos gods the warp was a much more stable place.

The eldar could well be the old ones themselves having forgotten about it after the enslaver plague. (This isnt in the new necron dex right? atleast something good came out of their changes)
And the eldar is humanoid which coupled with the necrons having short lifespans is all we know of the necrotyr. They could well be descendants from a common origin. The eldar/old ones achieving their long lifes/immortality after separating from the necrotyr. Then they go to war over the secrets of that immortality. Ok it would leave some holes in the story but hey its better than pharaos in space.

[Mechdra]

For me it will always be the Orks. Despite how silly and crude their technology is, the Orks could create anything out of anything. They could make gigantic tanks out of scrap metals and perform complex surgery that no other race could do.

The other one I would say is the Dark Eldar.