Imperium of Man - Technophobia: The Imperium of the 41st Millennium is a deeply superstitious society, its people bound in shackles of ignorance and blinded against dangerous truths. Atavistic terror and religious disgust characterise its attitudes to scientific and technological innovation, stemming from the barely remembered, apocalyptic horrors of the Age of Technology and Age of Strife.Advanced science and technology is but dimly understood by the mass of Humanity. Be they erudite scholars, military heroes, the pilots of voidcraft or ragged serfs, the majority of Mankind attributes the operation of technology to fickle, animistic Machine Spirits that must be beseeched with the proper rituals of activation and appeased with offerings of sanctified oil, sacred unguents and the like.Only the magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus possess true repositories of technological and scientific lore. They hoard all they have gathered in towering data-stacks deep within the industrial sprawls of their fortified factory-planets known as Forge Worlds. Yet even these insular tech-priests make no distinction between technical blueprint and sacred scripture, electronic component and holy relic.Their prayers are delivered in blaring binharic cant, their repairs conducted as incense-wreathed rituals and the construction of their revered machines performed by rote rather than understanding. Experimentation, innovation and invention are considered tantamount to heresy.The doctrines of their Machine God -- the deity whose physical manifestation is the Emperor or "Omnissiah" -- grew out of the terrors of the Age of Strife and warn of the dangers of rampant innovation. Knowledge lost to the ravages of time remains lost, for the terror of tech-heresy -- or at least, of its discovery and the subsequent punishment -- is greater by far than the dread of ignorance.For all this the Adeptus Mechanicus holds vast power in the Imperium, which is reliant upon advanced technology to survive. There is a reason that worship of the Omnissiah is the only officially tolerated religion besides the Imperial Creed. Nor do the Adeptus Mechanicus view the acquisition of lost technologies --archeotech -- to be in any way equivalent to the sin of fashioning devices anew.There is an irony long lost on the tech-priests that they hunt rapaciously for even the slightest fragments of ancient Human artifice, many of which are examples of the very Dark Age technology so reviled by their own creeds.Such relics of the Omnissiah are viewed as sacred treasures; entire armies are readily sacrificed to ensure their acquisition. Most precious of all are the remnants of Standard Template Construct machines that have survived the long Terran millennia. These remarkable STC databases allow auto-fabrication of devices that Humanity can well use in their war for survival; many of the Imperium's most ubiquitous weapons and war engines are still produced in this fashion.The Imperial Creed is as damming of unsanctioned technology as it is of mutation or rebellion against the Emperor. Many allegorical parables warn against the horrors of artificial general intelligence; such "thinking machines" are regarded with horror, and are banned even amongst the Adeptus Mechanicus.The average Imperial citizen views tech-heresy as akin to witchcraft, and reacts with equal intolerance to either. Some Human worlds play host to ancient sites where the remains of Dark Age technology lurk, but these are shunned as cursed by those forced to live in their shadows. Xenos technology is even further mistrusted; even the most replicable and galaxy-changing innovations are typically shunned if they are of alien origin. There are exceptions; dangerous archeotech sometimes finds its way up from the lawless roots of hive cities or mine workings after being excavated by labour gangs.Frontier World colonists -- who take a more pragmatic approach to survival than those who live on the more settled worlds of the Imperium -- trade with neighbouring xenos species, and in so doing introduce xenotech to the sprawling Imperial black markets. Such dangerous prizes are sought out by various ordos of the Inquisition, of course, as are their suppliers, for the damage that these deviant devices can cause in the wrong hands does not bear imagining.