The 5th Edition Necron Conspiracy

[Kieranator K82]

I am unaware if GW have ever done something like this before, but it seems that the robo-zombies are having a background overhaul.

The current, 3rd Edition Necron Codex background for everybody's favourite robots goes something like this:

Once upon a time, a very long, long, long, long time before humans existed, there was a galaxy-spanning empire known as the Necrontyr. They were unfortunate enough to have short lives, and were desperate for some way to extend their lives. Then one day, these gods called the C'Tan came along and offered eternal life to the Necrontyr. All they had to do was have their minds transferred into bodies of living metal so that they would be free of natural decay. Little did they know, the C'Tan wanted slaves, so instead of the Necrontyr's minds and souls transferred to the metal bodies, only their souls were, to animate the lifeless shells of living metal. The C'Tan, with complete control over the new Necron legions, used them to harvest the life forms of the galaxy. When everybody was dead, the Necrons were sent into a very, very, very, very, very long sleep until there was more life to kill; the 41st Millenium.

The 5th Edition Rulebook presents a different story in the Dark Millenium section, along these non-parallel lines:

Once upon a time, a very long, long, long, long time before humans existed, there was a galaxy-spanning empire known as the Necrontyr. They were unfortunate enough to have short lives, and were desperate for some way to extend their lives. Then one day, the Necrontyr made these artificial bodies of living metal, and transferred their minds and souls into their contraptions. Then, after showing off by killing everything, they went to sleep. Now, in the 41st Millenium, the Necrons have awoken to see living stuff again, and that really grinds their gears. After aeons of being lazy, and after tectonic shifts and what-not, most of the Necrons have degraded mentally. Dying lots in battle also reduces the level of conciousness, so most Warriors end up as mindless robot zombies. The Lords, having nicer apartments in the tomb complex, are generally completely unchanged, retaining their complete personality and state of mind. Particular Tombs had particular roles, and their behaviour reflects this. Some Tombs will go out and kill things on a regular basis as part of 'resource gathering', while others will spend their time building stuff.

Interesting. The Necrons are very different in the Rulebook than in the Codex. Apparently, GW have had a change of heart with the Necrontyr. Now, they are doing this stuff because they feel like it, not because they are slaves and have to. The C'Tan aren't mentioned or shown anywhere in the big Rulebook. Coincidence? Intentional? The only exception is the profiles of the Nightbringer and Deceiver in the reference sheet at the back of the book.

Feel free to voice your opinion on the matter at hand.

[Dark_Templar]

I still say they are completely rewriting the fluff to make them guardians sent back from the future to protect a young boy who is destined to be the saviour of humanity.

[S0ULDU5T]

A lot of people here probably know I'm more of a WHFB kinda guy but I thought somewhere in the fluff there was mention of them living in really harsh conditions, being weak and frail, etc that made them hate the other races at the time espeically those favored by the Old Ones?

Also, they didn't go away becuase thye killed everything but becuase there was a presence that even the C'tan feared and so they bassicly hibernated until the presence passed. Wasn't it something like a race that oculd mind control things? The C'tan were afriad that they would take control of the necrons and turn them against themselves so they hid and shut down except for one that decided to escape into the warp to try and learn their ways.

Something like that I think.

[BuFFo]

When I used to play Necrons, I always played my army as if the Lords ran things, and were totally sentient and able to communicate outside the Necron race.

The C'tan, though curious and powerful, were kept out of my army. No real reason besides the fact I like to fiekld tons of warriors, and never had room nor cared to field a 300 point model.

I made my army into three sections, gold, silver and bronze, each section run by a lord of the same material, but no lord more powerful than the other.

So I have been running the Necrons as apart from the C'tan since they came out, so this change in story just fits exactly with what I have been doing.

[Mike X]

I'm not a Necron player, but I really thought Necrons were of an entirely different origin than both the 3rd and 5th edition backgrounds you paraphrased.

I could've sworn it was something along the lines of there was a race called the Necrontyr who had a dying sun. One day they discovered the C'Tan, or a way to summon them or something. So the C'Tan offered the Necrontyr a deal: if they constructed bodies for the C'Tan to inhibit, they would in return give the Necrontyr everlasting life. But the C'Tan mislead (or betrayed) the Necrontyr and after they constructed the artificial bodies for their gods/saviors, the C'Tan transferred the race's souls into robotic bodies, forcing them to become mindless killing machines instead. I'm not sure why they went into hibernation; at first I thought it was because they ran out of things to kill, but the Eldar were around at the same time and they survived, so I just figured it was a loophole GW forgot to close.

But I've never even looked inside a Necron codex, this is just what I've heard and gathered from random sources.

[Vindur]

Seems in line with the rumours of ctan being apoc only and there being different types of lord and maybe special characters

[Just_Me]

I for one am not complaining about the new direction, I never really thought the C'tan had any business on a 40k scale field, and the new flavor is way more flexible and interesting. Now the Necrons are still scary, but... complicated, and a bit unpredictable.

@ Buffo: You realize now I am going to have to rip that army idea off ;)? It's just too cool not to... major props on that :D.

[BuFFo]

@ Buffo: You realize now I am going to have to rip that army idea off ;)? It's just too cool not to... major props on that :D.

Oh, by all means!

When the 'crons came out in 97ish, I went into the GW store on 8th street in new york city, and bought their entire stock.

I went home, and opened up my new raiders... I had 3 Lords, and I had 3 metallic paints, so I made a gold on, a bronze one and a silver one... Then I started to paint the warriors, scarabs and destroyers in the same vein.

Heck, it looked so cool, that it even made sense for the three lords and their forces to fight each other, so my friends would use one lord and I would use another and it was awesome.

Then again, back then, Necrons gave a -1BS penalty to any enemy unit near 12", I think, of a necron model/unit. The fights were real stupid when neither force could hit each other! LoL, Warp Spiders would destroy my necrons because their death spinners killed models that failed an initiative check on a 2d6 (something like this), and necrons had an initiative of 2!

Wow sorry for side tracking and getting all nostalgic...

[ggg]

I understood that the reason the necrons went into hibernation was a 'plague' that was (in the words of a C'Tan) killing everything else.

I believe that this plague was the enslavers (and a few similar others) - a warp lifeform / entity that was expected to wipe out the Old One's young races. There is a phrase in the necron Codex- 'unfortunately it appeared that the last of their master's cattle would be lost' - as the C'tan fed off the young races - these were a bit too psychic (having been bred to fight the necrontyr by the old ones) these woudl die leaving the C'tan hungry so the C'tan hibernated until the plague burnt itself out and new - less psychic life forms would be eventually thrown up by the galaxy leaving the reawakening C'tan something to munch on.

[Lord Azaghul]

I still say they are completely rewriting the fluff to make them guardians sent back from the future to protect a young boy who is destined to be the saviour of humanity.

They were sent back in time to proctect the emporer as a young boy from horus as a young boy! and thus a tv series was born.

[Melissia]

When I used to play Necrons, I always played my army as if the Lords ran things, and were totally sentient and able to communicate outside the Necron race.

That's what all the necron players around here do, too.

[sketchesofpayne]

-=Minor Spoiler Alert=-

The history of the Necrons as I've learned it. The details might be off here and there but this is the gist of it:

Some 200,000 years ago the Necrontyr existed contemporary to the Old Ones. While the Old Ones had mastered warp travel, the Necrontyr had to make do with sublight travel in temporal stasis. The Necrontyr's sun gave off harmful energy/radiation that made life for the Necrontyr short and harsh.

Eventually the Necrontyr discovered that there was a massive being of some kind inhabiting the corona of their star. Unbeknownst to them this was part of the reason it's energy was harmful to them. They made attempts to communicate with it by sending ultra-long wavelength messages over long periods of time. The being came to be called a Star God, and there were others. The Star Gods or C'tan had existed since the origin of the galaxy. They fed off the energy emanating from stars, sucked them dry, and moved on.

The Necrontyr constructed a body of living metal for the Star God to inhabit. Once in this body the C'tan discovered it could nourish off the energy of the emotions of living creatures, terror being the most delicious to them.

The C'tan directed the Necrontyr in awakening the other Star Gods. They did this in order to wreak their jealousy upon the Old Ones. The Necrontyr, lead by the C'tan waged a galaxy-wide war on the Old Ones. The Old Ones took heavy losses in this conflict and were driven nearly to extinction. As the conflict began to subside the C'tan turned on one another, in order to continue the spread of terror, bloodshed, and despair.

Over half the Necrontyr had formed a cult around the worship of the C'tan, and those that did not willingly submit to them were forced to. The C'tan directed their cult followers to construct similar bodies that their souls could be bound to, in order to serve their god for all eternity.

During the conflict the Old Ones discovered the C'tan were weak against the energy of the warp. They started incubating races on various planets around the galaxy trying to breed into them psyker abilities so they could fight off the Necrons.

The Proliferation of sentients with psyker abilites began to create echos in the warp. All the hatred, jealousy, despair, sadness and anger gave birth to malevolent entities in the warp. However, with the aid of their new children, notably the Eldar, the Old Ones were able to drive back the C'tan.

(Side note: all the while the Deceiver, being the weakest among the C'tan had been maneuvering each of his rivals to bring about their downfall. It is implied that many C'tan met their end during these conflicts thanks to his efforts.)

In the wake of their victory the Old Ones had unwittingly created another great enemy in the form of chaos daemons and creating/awakening chaos gods. At this time the remaining 4 C'tan, the Nightbringer, the Deceiver, the Void Dragon, and the Outsider went into hiding in vast stasis tombs to await the day they could return. To prevent the forces of chaos from taking over the material realm the Old Ones sealed off the Immaterium.

It is at this point that the Old Ones seem to leave the stage of the galaxy's history. The galaxy is left to their progeny, with the Eldar spreading far and wide. The Eldar control much of the galaxy for over 100,000 years.

At some point humanity enters it's golden (dark) age of technology. They prosper for tens of thousands of years, until the machine uprising. Almost nothing is said about humanity's war against their artificial intelligence creations. Some time after the conflict warp space is ravaged by great galaxy-wide storms, making warp travel impossible, and cutting off all human worlds from each other. This period is later referred to as 'Old Night.'

The next great timeline event is the final decline of the ancient Eldar into decadence, pride, and perversion. This happening in a wide-spread race with prolific psyker ability lead to a massive build up over the milllennia (or eons) of negative energy within the Eldar webway. This catalyzes in the destruction of the Eldar homeworld and the birth of Slannesh, who devours the souls of all Eldar in proximity to the webway. Some saw the end coming and escaped on the Craftworlds or corsair ships. Others resided on Eldar worlds without a webway gate and were safe.

This event tore a sector-wide hole in the boundary between the material plane and the immaterium, known today as the Eye of Terror. The resulting psychic shockwave cleared the storms that had prevented humanity from interstellar travel. It is at this time that the Emperor begins the unification of Earth and puts into motion the beginnings of the Great Crusade to reunite humanity.

Of the C'tan, the Nightbringer had taken his remaining followers to rest in a stasis tomb on what would later be the Imperial world of Pavonis. It is stated that the Deceiver had sabotaged the tomb which caused to Nightbringer to 'awaken early' and forced him to feed on the souls of his Necron followers to sustain himself, until being fully awakened in the events detailed in the first book of the Ultramarines omnibus.

The Outsider is currently believed to exist in a Dyson sphere in the "southeast" periphery of the galaxy. Nothing else is known of him.

The Void Dragon we now know hid himself on Earth, but was defeated by the Emperor and imprisoned on Mars. The coming of the Omnissiah was an idea planted by the Emperor to pave the way for himself to take control of Mars, but the whisperings of the Void Dragon perverted this to a worship of itself as the Machine God.

Currently the Necrons are now awakening from their 200,000 year sleep, and the C'tan are gaining strength to wage another reign of terror on the galaxy to feed their hunger.

[Just_Me]

You are broadly correct in most details, though I believe the rise of the C'tan and war with the Old Ones was over 70 million years ago, rather than the few hundred thousand you have mentioned. I recall that number because I couldn't help but notice that it very roughly coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs, and wondered if GW were making a subtle joke there ;).

[Dark_Templar]

You are broadly correct in most details, though I believe the rise of the C'tan and war with the Old Ones was over 70 million years ago, rather than the few hundred thousand you have mentioned. I recall that number because I couldn't help but notice that it very roughly coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs, and wondered if GW were making a subtle joke there ;).

Are GW employees that clever?:confused:

[Just_Me]

Are GW employees that clever?:confused:

Well... they do still have us buying their overpriced models, so they must be smarter than you might otherwise think :D.

[B_Steele]

It's between 60 million and 70 million years.