Also, during this time, the first sentient alien races were encountered by Mankind's explorers and colonists. The Warp-Drive's development greatly accelerated the Human colonisation of the Milky Way Galaxy, and for the first time allowed interstellar trade and communications between the far-flung extrasolar Human colonies and the homeworld of Mankind, Terra. Slowly, through many disasters, Humanity learned to use the Warp to make faster than light journeys out of their own star system. Though such vessels could now jump multiple light years, the many dangers inherent in the Warp meant that journeys could still take several standard years and many vessels never arrived at their destinations at all. The true start of the Age of Technology was marked by the development of the Warp-Drive and the Gellar Field sometime around the 18th Millennium A.D., allowing Human spacecraft to make short jumps through the recently discovered extradimensional realm known as the Immaterium, or "the Warp," traveling vast interstellar distances in a relatively short amount of time. This forced the individual, colonised star systems to be completely self-sufficient in all of their vital requirements (food, medicine, technology, etc.) and allowed them to develop distinctive languages and cultures. Interstellar trade was therefore severely restricted or non-existent. These Long March vessels established many of the colonies later called Knight Worlds as they carried the designs of the combat walkers called Knights that were used by the early colonists for both defence and labour. Voyages beyond the Sol System took generations and the colonies that were established by the so-called "Long March" sub-light starships were effectively isolated from each other and from Terra. Spacecraft were still only capable of sub-light speeds at this time.
Humanity initially established colonies within Terra's solar system. The "Stellar Exodus" is the name given by Imperial savants to the historical period that was defined by Humanity's earliest interstellar colonisation of other worlds beyond the Sol System, actually starting in many cases in the millennia before the Age of Technology officially began in the 15th Millennium AD. This period is also considered a dark age in the minds of the faithful and the priests of the Ecclesiarchy because Mankind in the Age of Technology had come to worship science as its god, and the God-Emperor had not yet revealed Himself as the true saviour of Humanity. The lost Age of Technology is thus considered "dark" by most of the elites in the Imperium of Man's current era because of the dangers it unleashed. It is this innate suspicion of reason and progress and their scientific fruits born of the horrific aftermath of the Age of Technology that has led Humanity in the Age of the Imperium to be so willing to embrace ignorance and superstition. Many "facts" about the Age of Technology are no more than legend.Īlthough a "golden age" for Humanity in terms of scientific achievement, because of the catastrophic effects of the following Age of Strife in which so many of the technologies developed in this era were used to cause massive destruction and suffering on countless Human-settled worlds, much of Mankind has since come to regard advanced scientific knowledge as an abhorrent and dangerous commodity. This age occurred long before the current Age of the Imperium and knowledge of this time period is now incredibly sparse. Even tens of millennia later, Mankind has not been able to equal or regain its former height of achievement attained in this era.
It saw the development of the first true Human interstellar civilisation and the birth of some form of stellar confederation centred on the Human homeworld of Terra. until the onset of the Age of Strife in the 25th Millennium. The Age of Technology, informally often referred to as the " Dark Age of Technology," was the zenith of Humanity's scientific knowledge and technological prowess in the Milky Way Galaxy, which lasted from the 15th Millennium A.D. The Age of Technology saw the development of the first Human, Warp-capable interstellar spacecraft.
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