Necrons
Necrons are an alien race whose age is hard to even imagine. Awakened from a sixty-million-year slumber, they are ready to fight the living once again! Thousands of immortal, soulless warriors rise from dusty stasis tombs, ready to annihilate the living who have filled the galaxy. Their astonishing technology surpassed any modern equivalents long before the Eldar, the oldest among contemporary races, even came to be. And although the Imperium of Man has only recently recognized the Necrons' new emergence, their monstrous gods devoured stars in those distant times when even planets had not yet formed from cosmic dust.
Once a proud race, whose dominions stretched across the stars, the Necrons now exist solely to satisfy the whims of their all-knowing lords, tirelessly they follow, obeying the will of the malevolent beings - ancient gods who gifted them immortality. At the forefront of their forces march the Necron Lords clad in tattered shrouds, flowing in the otherworldly breeze, they silently lead their skeletal warriors into battle. Separate from them, unnatural monsters and battle machines of their race advance; some as swift and deadly as the wind, others slow and inevitable as death itself. The strategy of the Necrons is based on sudden, terrifying attacks without warning, unleashing slaughter and sowing terror, followed by equally sudden disappearances from the battlefield. The objectives of these assaults remain incomprehensible, but their complete and destructive efficacy cannot be doubted.
The Dawn of Time, the history of the creation of the Necrons:
It is said that the birth of the star gods occurred at the dawn of the very universe. They were born from incredible flows of energy that birthed the world we know today. At the earliest stage of its creation, the universe was no more than a vast cloud of gas and dust, the cradle of billions of future stars. Long before the first planets appeared, strange, yet self-sufficient life began in the crowns of stars, soon gaining consciousness. Cold and unfathomable to flesh and blood beings, but consciousness, undoubtedly.
In later eras, these beings became known as C'tan, but at that time they had little in common with the terrible entities they would later become. They latched onto the stars that birthed them, devouring their energy, shortening the lifespans of their cosmic parents by hundreds of thousands of years. Soon, they learned to travel across the universe on wings of magnetic fields, moving from one star to another in their eternal hunger. They paid no heed to the chunks of solid matter they flew past. The magnetic fields and planetary energies were too small even for the C'tan to notice.
The Ascendancy of the Old Ones.
Just as the stars gave life to beings of gas and plasma, so too did planets give rise to life as we know it, and it began its long journey towards consciousness. The first race to learn to travel the seas of stars was known as the Old Ones. They possessed a slow but methodical and systematic intellect, and they elevated astronomy and celestial mechanics to levels unseen both before and after them. Their understanding of the dance of stars and planets was so profound that it allowed them to utilize parallel universes, achieving unimaginable heights in psychic engineering. Their science enabled them to cross vast abysses of space in a single step, and they seeded life everywhere. The Old Ones believed that any life could be useful, and wherever they went, they cultivated life and reason, scattering the seeds of future life across hundreds of thousands of worlds.
Necrontyr
At the time when the Old Ones spread across the galaxy, other younger and hotter races followed in their wake. The Necrontyr were one such race, born beneath the cruel sun that ruthlessly spurred evolution with radiation and plasma winds. Little is known of the Necrontyr in those distant times, only that their lives were short and bleak, and their bodies twisted and disfigured by the cruel caresses of their star. They were a fleeting people living under the constant oppression of death and surrounded by eternal losses. The Necrontyr attempted to overcome their fate through science, but they quickly realized that even science could not transcend the curse etched into their very bodies. They resigned themselves to this knowledge, and yet despair settled within them. Their star ruled over them, a god giving life and taking it away in one. Their cities became monuments of waiting for death, the living became guests in cities filled with the tombs of their ancestors.
Unable to find peace on their home planet, the Necrontyr turned to the stars. Utilizing stasis tomb ships and atomic light-speed engines, they attempted to colonize distant worlds on vessels crafted from living metal. After some time in the stars, they encountered the Old Ones. The Old Ones colonized planets far faster than the Necrontyr could manage. This, along with the extremely long lifespan of the Old Ones, perceived by the Necrontyr as near immortality, ignited a burning hatred in their hearts that consumed them spiritually as the repulsive cancerous tumors destroyed them physically. How could one race have so little, while another had so much, nearly all that the first so desperately needed? Envy filled the Necrontyr, and they turned their entire civilization towards the total annihilation of the Old Ones and all their spawn.
The War in the Heavens.
The history of the war that followed would take a whole library in itself. But the Necrontyr never had even a shadow of hope for success. They surpassed the Old Ones in technology, but the Old Ones possessed a network of warp portals, and hopelessly outmaneuvered the Necrontyr. The Necrontyr were pushed back step by step, until they became for the Old Ones a mere nuisance, a hidden threat lurking in the darkness of the Halo stars. The anger of the Necrontyr, cast out and forgotten, diminished over thousands of years of captivity, and its embers crystallized into a solid hatred for all living things and a determination to exact revenge on their invincible foes.
Long before this, the Necrontyr had studied the stars, striving to understand the nature of their deadly energies. After long ages of studying, searching for some weapon that could topple the Old Ones, the Necrontyr discovered certain anomalies in ancient, dying stars. In the intricate matrices of stellar energies, they found intelligent beings, creatures of pure energy, older than any form of material life. These beings had a very faint understanding of the universe when the Necrontyr discovered them; they fed on the energies and magnetic flows of red giants. Children of the stars themselves, the offspring of their god of death - this was the weapon the Necrontyr sought to bring down the Old Ones.
The power of these beings was incredible, the awakened force of the stars themselves, and the Necrontyr named them C'tan, meaning “star gods” in their language. The star beings occupied more space than planets, and their minds were too vast for comprehension, and how the Necrontyr established contact with them remains a mystery. Realizing that such beings could never comprehend the concept of the material world without manifesting within it, the Necrontyr crafted bodies for their gods from the same living metal they used in their ships. Fragmentary legends speak of how the star vampires permeated their new forms, moving among planets and stars on an immaterial bridge.
The Manifestation of the C'tan.
The immeasurable was embraced, and the C'tan inhabited the metallic bodies created for them by the Necrontyr. The stronger and sturdier the C'tan entered the material world, the better they understood the significance and pleasure of flesh and life. The dance of close particles captivated them, the delightful electromagnetic currents emanating from the mortal bodies of the Necrontyr awakened a hunger within the C'tan, different from that they experienced among the furious flows of stars.
The Necrontyr looked at their creations in awe, and soon the C'tan became their lords. They held the power of gods and soon were worshipped as such. Perhaps they were tainted by the material universe, or what they became was merely a reflection of who they had been among the stars. Regardless, the C'tan were capricious and cruel as the very stars that birthed them, and as powerful. They reveled in the flattery and admiration of their mortal slaves.
The Fall of the Necrontyr.
Armed with the weapons of the star gods and ships that could cross the galaxy in an instant, the Necrontyr were ready to restart their war. But the C'tan wished to grant their slaves a new boon. They offered them a way to attain the stability and immortality that the Necrontyr had always desired. The shells would be cast aside and absorbed, and clad in cold, metallic forms and now devoid of the weaknesses of mortal flesh, the Necrontyr would be able to take revenge on the Old Ones and the entire unyielding universe. Whether the Necrontyr knew the price they would have to pay is now uncertain. But the Necrontyr ceased to exist, becoming the Necrons, condemned to eternal servitude to their star gods. The C'tan devoured an entire race, leaving behind only the ghostly echo of the Necrontyr. Only the strongest among the Necrontyr managed to retain their self-awareness, and even they were weak shadows of their former selves.
But the Necrons no longer cared. They could now live forever, as promised by their gods. Only a single trait remained with the Necrons from the Necrontyr: a burning hatred for all living things. Legions of immortal iron warriors stepped onto their tomb ships, and the galaxy was engulfed in flames. The Old Ones’ mastery of the warp was now countered by the absolute supremacy of the C'tan in the material world, and the enemies of the Necrons would experience terrible suffering in the slaughter that commenced.
The Ascendancy of the Necrons.
The C'tan now ruled the galaxy. The few remaining bastions of the Old Ones were besieged, and the races nurtured by the Old Ones became fodder for the insatiable hunger of the C'tan. To the younger races, the C'tan and the Necrons became the cruel gods who harvested lives at their whim, instilling both terror and reverence in equal measure. For reasons that are now difficult to determine, the C'tan began to fight among themselves, for sport and out of boredom. They unleashed forces that turned entire planets to ashes, quenched stars, and plunged entire systems into black holes. New cities were built at the cost of millions of lives, only to be razed to the ground again. Soon, as the harvest became meager, the C'tan began to consume one another, leaving but a few remaining. The survivors hunted each other for many centuries. In the end, even the Old Ones, whose patience and implacability became legend, began to experience despair. They manipulated genetics, creating life forms that were strongly linked to the warp and could channel psychic energy to protect themselves. They grew numerous potential races of warriors, and it is said that among them were such races as the early Eldar, Rasha, K'nib, and many others. Millennia passed, and the seeds of the Old Ones bore fruit, while the C'tan continued to destroy life in the galaxy.
The Old Ones Strike Back.
Hot young races spread across the galaxy, battling the science of the Necrons with the magic of the warp. The empire of death and horror that the C'tan had wrought began to falter. The energies of the warp were a curse to them, and despite all the destruction they had unleashed, they could not stop the relentless advance of the Old Ones.
The C'tan, joining forces for the first time in many millions of years, began looking for a way to halt the fire of souls of the young races. The C'tan conceived the plan of the Great Reflection, to permanently sever the material world from the warp, thus eliminating the magic of the Old Ones in its very inception. With their divine powers, their success was merely a matter of time, and they began their work. But before they could complete their task, the seeds of destruction sown by the Old Ones millennia before bore fruit, leading to an unforeseen cataclysm.
The suffering of the young races plunged the warp into chaos. Wars, pain, and destruction echoed countless times in the warped mirror of the Ocean of Souls. Cyclones of souls, born from devastation and death, merged with the previously formless energies of the warp. The primal energies of the Immaterium turned into horrific predators, ripping souls from vulnerable psykers as their reality was torn and reshaped by the forces that caused the war in the material universe.
The Approach of the Apocalypse.
The inhabitants of the warp sought cracks in the barrier between worlds, searching for a way into the material universe. The Old Ones pushed forth their last creations, meant to defend their strongholds from both the C'tan and the warp equally. Among them were races like the resilient green-skinned Kroor and the technology-copying Jokaero. But it was already too late. The intergalactic network of warp tunnels of the Old Ones had been breached and lost to them, their greatest creations and energy sources flooded with nightmares released by the beings of the Old Ones.
The most powerful of these nightmares became the Shards, possessing the ability to control representatives of the young races and transforming the converted psykers into their portals, thus further increasing their presence in the material world. It was a total disaster for the Old Ones when the Shards took control of their spawn. The Pandora's Box opened by the young races ultimately scattered the remaining Old Ones; their powers were broken henceforth and eternally.
Life itself stood on the brink of total annihilation in this apex of war between the Old Ones and the C'tan. Now, with the invasion of the Shards from the Immaterium reaching epidemic proportions, the survivors seemed doomed.
The C'tan Retreat to Tombs.
The Necrons' pursuit of cold science proved justified, and they undoubtedly experienced immense satisfaction from the collapse of the civilization of the Old Ones. Unfortunately, it seemed that with this, the last sustenance for their gods would disappear as well. But the C'tan had a solution to this problem. They chose to wait, out of time. Let the Shards take what they desire and let the galaxy become a desert. Time heals all. The psykers would perish, the Shards would depart, planets would recover and give rise to new life and souls to feed the C'tan. This may take millions of years, but time is always there, and the C'tan were confident that they would outlast all.
The C'tan preferred to avoid the great catastrophe of which they felt the approach by immersing themselves in the stasis tombs of the Necrons, sealing them for millions of years. Their mechanical slaves and Necrons would protect them during their slumber on the lifeless planets, preventing the Shards from reaching them. Only when they are disturbed by intelligent races with suitable traits that could be subjugated and devoured would the star vampires awaken again.
At this moment, only two C'tan have left their tombs and now traverse the galaxy. They have encountered a new age of civilizations and wars that they did not expect to see. The galaxy is full of life, but it is also full of hidden psykers and followers of hellish powers born from the War in the Heavens. The C'tan require much time and complex manipulations to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. Chaos agents must be destroyed, Eldar eliminated, the great work finished, and Humanity tamed before the harvest can truly begin.
But the C'tan and their servant Necrons are not beholden to time; their science still has no equal, and time fights on their side.
LORD OF NECRONS
The most advanced of the servants of the C'tan, the Lords of Necrons serve as commanders and energy nodes of the Necron army. They are shrouded in ancient shrouds and carry weapons of terrifying power. They lead the Necrons into battle in supernatural silence. A web covers their metallic bodies, and they wear their ancientness as a mantle and a sign of their status. Surrounded by glowing arcs of energy, and a devilish fire burns in their empty eye sockets.
NECRON WARRIORS
When skeletal Necron Warriors enter battle, the enemy trembles in helpless dread, for bullets and laser beams bounce off their metal limbs. Equally terrifying is the Gauss Reaper featured in their armament, for it can strip a victim atom by atom, within a heartbeat unraveling skin, muscles, and bones, leaving no ashes of the foe behind.
GHOSTS
Grotesque floating assassins, Ghosts truly resemble incorporeal spirits when they phase out of the real world and become invisible. The elongated flexible spine of a Ghost is equipped with powerful shock whips and blades, while from wide slumped shoulders a grinning bare skull leers, and the fingers of long, hanging arms terminate in scalpels and a nightmarish array of other surgical instruments.
REAPERS
Twisted night creatures, Reapers go before the Necron army, rolling like a plague's wind tidal wave of horror. Crooked yet horrifyingly agile beings born from the darkest nightmares of humanity, with their long blades they are capable of skinning flesh in mere seconds. Their blood-drained coverings are donned upon their armor-thin frames, leaving the flayed corpses to instill panic and confusion among enemy ranks.
IMMORTALS
Among all Necrontyr, the favored servants of the C'tan were those who swiftly shed their cursed fleshly forms and became soulless Necrons. Now, these Immortals - relentless metallic giants, whose gleaming armor has darkened and become tarnished from the destructive touches of time. Deprived of flesh, their metallic skulls instill dread in the hearts of foes, while the eerie silence of the approaching Immortals unnerves stronger than the bloody battle cries.
PARIAHS
Products of the horrifying symbiosis of Necron technology and Humanity's evolution, Pariahs embody another step toward the ideal in the understanding of the C'tan. Impeccable and soulless, like machines, they plunge any living being into a panicked awareness of their transience. Staining minds with their filthy touches, radiating horror and terrible power, Pariahs embody the ultimate stage of the Necron threat.
DESTROYERS
Necron warriors affixed to hovering platforms instill fear under the name of Destroyers. They are significantly enhanced versions of the Immortals, equally broad but with more pronounced spinal features through which powerful conduits of their terrifying weaponry flow. The speed and fury of their attacks have not diminished with their antiquity, and even in the present day they still advance at the forefront of the bloody harvest.
HEAVY DESTROYER
Like their lighter brethren, Heavy Destroyers are a blend of the Immortal and a hovering platform. Generally, Heavy Destroyers carry a powerful Gauss cannon, devastating to any armor, whose fire is directed at the target by the multi-lensed targeting systems of the Destroyer.
TOMB SPIDER
These arachnoid creations are robots designed for the repair and maintenance of the ancient tombs of the Necrons. Their numerous eyes gaze from an expressionless metallic mask that serves as their head. Their robust armor provides necessary protection, while their agile limbs perform necessary repairs. If needed, their repair instruments can also serve as weapons.
MONOLITH
The Monolith combines properties of a transport craft, armored destroyer, and a symbol of Necron might. It glides heavily above the battlefield, its crystalline core pulsating with painful energy, and powerful Gauss lightning discharges from its weapon ports. The nose section of the Monolith is capable of opening a dark portal and redeploying fresh Necron forces to the battlefield, adding new fuel to the fire of destruction.
The Slaughter at N'kela
In the year 785.M41, the first of the most powerful incursions of the Necrons occurred at the Royan Strait, Segmentum Obscurus. Though the system was removed from Terra by 3,000 light years, the Imperium extended so far that some planets managed to thrive even at such a distance from the center. On N'kela, the most vital agro-world of this sector, there was a small human colony, whose inhabitants mainly settled in small communities widely scattered across the vast continents of the planet. The events experienced by this world turned out to be one of the most striking and unexplained examples of Necron assaults on inhabited worlds, as the root cause (hate towards human life forms) was nowhere to be found.
Jasu Obelyu, the elder of the village of M'bele, managed to create the most complete report regarding the events on the planet and the Necron raid on N'kela. A team of decoding servitors managed to decipher this report. Below is an approximate translation of his account.
"A huge comet appeared in the night sky. But strangely, even the birds fell silent. Later, I realized that demons had come. But our defenders were weak, and then the demons managed to find the women and children hiding in the shed. These demons were made of steel, and where their faces should have been were mere skulls. They appeared soundlessly. My son, Soli, screamed that they were ghosts of nightmarish dreams. He hurled his spear at them. The spear struck one of the demons in the back. The demon raised its hand, aiming it at Soli, and the demon's hand was engulfed in green flames. The flames leapt towards Soli and consumed him; he was still screaming when we fled in terror. Then they began to kill us; our spears and slings could not harm the skins of the demons. When they found the women and children, the chief demon stepped forward. He was great and horrifying in appearance. He sowed among us the seeds of horror and fear, so that our mouths could not utter a word. Poor Gera - he chose her with his finger. She screamed: and other children hurriedly crawled away from her. The leader of the steel demons lifted her in his arms. But he did not kill her; he held her close and covered her with his cloak. Then he went away, and his henchmen began to kill again. My wife and I hid in the cellar and saw everything. When the next morning we crawled into the light, no one was alive. But the iron demons had also vanished."
This one report alone caused a real sensation. Analysts worked on it for many days and documented their conclusions. The majority speculated that the child chosen by the Necron commander was a psyker. But this fact is dubious, as the Black Ships passed by this planet only a few months before the indicated event, and no significant psychic activity was detected even near the village of M'bele. Therefore, serious conclusions cannot be drawn, even with such an important argument as eyewitness testimony.
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