Like I said, I don't think I could tell you too much. [He paid far too little attention in the Schola for that. He might have had to do a group presentation about this that he only just barely passed.] But I'm happy to oblige your interest. Of my understanding, and the very few scraps of information we have, it was a time of massive advancement for the human race, but it ended in catastrophe thanks to those same technologies. Warp travel, mass-colonization, STCs, and notably the... Men of Iron, which were AI housed in bodies of metal.

[It visibly discomfits him to be talking about them, but he papers over it with some jokes.]

After some time, they got tired of ordered about and had it out with humans. I suppose that's what happens when people have more brains than good sense, to be mucking around with things that couldn't possibly end well in any sense of the imagination.