Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm pretty sure Necrons don't work that way.

Also resources.

 Tyran wrote:
I'm pretty sure Necrons don't work that way.

Also resources.

They go blah blah blah personality matrix, personality data, high quality body for soldiers, low quality body for everyone else.

So why can't they just copy a personality data and paste it into a high quality body to get 9999999 necron heroes instead of random mooks with less skills.

Not to mention Trazyn and the like jumps from body to body. That means copy and paste.

Trazyn still only can exist in one body at a time. Whatever metaphysical properties that define Necron individuals, while transferable, are not duplicable.

I have seen comments about how the Imperium is in a "Dark age of Technology" - how, for instance, a person would find a drive a car until it ran out of fuel, and then they would pray for it to start working again, otherwise leaving it alone, not knowing how to refuel. Same for weapons - fire until empty, then pray it works again, then throw it away. I've heard it called 'tech heresy' when someone hits the wrong 'trigger' on a gun and a box falls out of it, breaking it... or is it only heresy when you pick the box back up and put it back in? In any case, it is definitely heresy if you take another box that looks similar and put it in instead.

I actually like the man-powered battleship cannon loaders. I like the horse cavalry imperial guard. But guardsmen who do not know how their own equipment works is where I draw the line on suspension of disbelief - maybe an unpopular opinion. It reminds me of that idea that the Inquisition kills anyone who even knows about Chaos, which would basically be everyone (I had read that somewhere, I had also read that it was just purely untrue) - same thing here.

here is a quote about the Chem Dogs: "They have been known to strip weapons from vehicles and proceed on foot when fuel is low, or replace broken machine parts with similarly-shaped pieces of scrap. Though effective, such practices have seen more than a few Savlar officers executed for heresy by the Adeptus Mechanicus"

here is a quote about the Cadians: "Any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by age ten was born on the wrong planet."

here is a quote from "Drill Abbot Kross Vorgt" speaking to students at the Schola Progenium: "No no no! By the Throne, boy, how many times? Depress the loading catch before removing the drum feed, not while removing the drum feed! You'll jam the weapon! (smack) Oh stop bawling, child. You're ten years old, you should have learned basic Autogun procedures by now. Fifty press ups and fifty Pax Imperiums. And certainly there will be no dinner"

I believe there would be planets under the Adeptus Mechanicus control that are kept so controlled and so ignorant... maybe also Some feudal worlds are like this. But I can't believe that 50% or 90% or 99% of the Imperium is like this. Certainly the Catachans wouldn't survive their own planet without 'forbidden' knowledge.

edit: wanted to add, I do like the Adeptus Mechanicus secret reasoning of 'if you replace the wrong part, we ALL get doomed by AI again' for enforcing these laws.

TLR: replacing parts on broken equipment is tech heresy... but are tech heresy 'laws' so widely enforced, or only on some planets, only when the Adeptus Mechanicus is 'in the same room with you'?

Is this a lore contradiction, oversight, or have I missed something (like, for instance, if 'different worlds are different')?

PS: I'm also curious how Primaris tech was developed, with regard to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Thanks for reading!

Terran Cow God wrote:
I have seen comments about how the Imperium is in a "Dark age of Technology" - how, for instance, a person would find a drive a car until it ran out of fuel, and then they would pray for it to start working again, otherwise leaving it alone, not knowing how to refuel. Same for weapons - fire until empty, then pray it works again, then throw it away. I've heard it called 'tech heresy' when someone hits the wrong 'trigger' on a gun and a box falls out of it, breaking it... or is it only heresy when you pick the box back up and put it back in? In any case, it is definitely heresy if you take another box that looks similar and put it in instead.

Is this a lore contradiction, oversight, or have I missed something (like, for instance, if 'different worlds are different')?

PS: I'm also curious how Primaris tech was developed, with regard to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Thanks for reading!

You’d have to take a look at where you saw those comments. They don’t seem to be anything Citadel/GW have ever published, and definitely don’t agree with stuff they have.

It’s entirely political. The Martian priesthood is a political organization and they use political and military action to prevent anyone else from doing research, as a means of consolidating power. I don’t think those ideas you mentioned about fueling trucks mean anything

The AdMech is a cult, it treats machines as sacred (so fiddling with one without authorization is sacrilege) and their handling as religious ceremony. So you can do maintenance, as long as you use the sacred oils and incense, untighten the screws in the correct order while reciting the appropriate litanies to appease the machine spirit and only use replacement parts properly sanctioned by a techpriest. Basically, imagine people blindly following an instruction manual where every step has been ritualized and some other pointless steps have been added for no clear reason. The more advanced procedures are only known by fully-fledged techpriests. The highest ranking ones may even know actual science and understand how stuff works, but regular people don't really know what they're doing and can only repeat what they've learned.

Terran Cow God wrote:
I have seen comments about how the Imperium is in a "Dark age of Technology" - how, for instance, a person would find a drive a car until it ran out of fuel, and then they would pray for it to start working again, otherwise leaving it alone, not knowing how to refuel. Same for weapons - fire until empty, then pray it works again, then throw it away. I've heard it called 'tech heresy' when someone hits the wrong 'trigger' on a gun and a box falls out of it, breaking it... or is it only heresy when you pick the box back up and put it back in? In any case, it is definitely heresy if you take another box that looks similar and put it in instead.

You've got to remember a few things:
1. It's a really big galaxy. That's going to cause regional variation.
2. Over time and from different authors, the rules can differ.
3. Uncontrolled innovations in technology led to things in the past like the Machine Men, and the Dark Age of Technology. No one knows where the tipping point is, so any number of innovations are deemed dangerous and stomped out before they can spread.

So you end up with a tech priesthood responsible for preserving technology and stamping out innovative uses of that technology to avoid unknown doom. Of course, it's something that's subject to political manipulation and infighting.

I think one of the better examples of the conflict over tech heresy was over a Predator or Rhino variant that the Space Wolves ended up bodging together. I think the variant was in service for about a decade before the Adeptus Mechanicus gave their approval of the variant, citing some obscure STC fragment for justification that the variant wasn't "new".

On the other hand, "you pressed the wrong lever and the ammo box fell out" isn't an example of tech heresy but the "ignorance is our strength" defense against tech heresy. If you don't try to understand how something works, and just work with it how you've been told to, then nothing bad will happen. If you follow the instructions improperly, that's a risk of accidental innovation, but it's mostly harmless and just shows that the person isn't sufficiently pious and probably needs to be brought back in line.

Terran Cow God wrote:
PS: I'm also curious how Primaris tech was developed, with regard to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Thanks for reading!

Very short version - Guilliman tasked Archmagos Belisarius Cawl with improving Marines immediately after the HH. Cawl had Guilliman's authority to act (plus the Emperor's original Primarch / Marine 'blueprints'), but when Guilliman went into stasis Cawl continued in the shadows. The AdMech had very little idea what Cawl was up to, and some consider him a heretic.

Worse, he is a scientist!

The Eldar DO hold worlds. They aren't ALL on craftworlds.
The Exodites were the first to flee from the coming disaster (they saw the signs that their empire was going to implode and decided to bug out. The first exodus, hence exodites) and fled to the colony worlds on the furthest reaches of their old empire.
These planets are reachable via ship and/or webway

Then there are the maiden worlds. Worlds created for use by eldar colonists, but many have since been corrupted by the lesser races.

There are also the crone worlds, where rangers and pathfinders travel to in order to recover soul stones. These were the original homeworlds. Sundered by the calamity.

The craftworlders were the ones who heeded the exodite warnings, but only just made it out of the coming calamity. They are the ones who live on ginormous sailing cities (too large to travel within the webway, they sail the galactic winds.)

beast_gts wrote:

Terran Cow God wrote:
PS: I'm also curious how Primaris tech was developed, with regard to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Thanks for reading!

Very short version - Guilliman tasked Archmagos Belisarius Cawl with improving Marines immediately after the HH. Cawl had Guilliman's authority to act (plus the Emperor's original Primarch / Marine 'blueprints'), but when Guilliman went into stasis Cawl continued in the shadows. The AdMech had very little idea what Cawl was up to, and some consider him a heretic.

Slightly longer version: keep in mind Guiliman recruited him back post-Heresy. Cawl is _old_. Well. The non-replaceable parts of him are old. But it means that he has the Mechanicum mindset, not the Adeptus Mechanicus mindset.
Also, Cawl worked on parts of the original marine project. Well, more or less. But he was one of the most qualified people to do the work at the time, and is probably the only such person at M41. Well, and Fabius Bile.
Cawl's process was still mostly trial and error. Both Indomitus and Avenging Son go into the process from the POV of the Primaris subject, and they aren't fun. Sharp memories of torturous experiments before going back to sleep, and hypnoinduction dreams, where they're tasked to fight (and lose) against various xenos threats, over and over again. If they do well, the simulation becomes more difficult.

Longer answer: Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work by Guy Haley.

I still think GW would have done better by introducing him earlier (so he's less out of nowhere, same with primaris), but fully fleshed out, he works pretty well in the established setting.

Terran Cow God wrote:I have seen comments about how the Imperium is in a "Dark age of Technology" - how, for instance, a person would find a drive a car until it ran out of fuel, and then they would pray for it to start working again, otherwise leaving it alone, not knowing how to refuel. Same for weapons - fire until empty, then pray it works again, then throw it away. I've heard it called 'tech heresy' when someone hits the wrong 'trigger' on a gun and a box falls out of it, breaking it... or is it only heresy when you pick the box back up and put it back in? In any case, it is definitely heresy if you take another box that looks similar and put it in instead.

None of those are true. For example, lasgun battery packs get tossed in a fire to recharge in the field (though the Ad Mech frowns on this practice). Yes, they're that durable, and yes the battery pack converts enough thermal energy to store and use as laser blasts.
Complex technology is largely above the 'lower orders,' but most people know how to operate day to day stuff. [With the caveat that the 'day to day' tech of a ship crewman and a grox farmer are very different]. But no one is discarding unfueled cards and empty guns. (Indeed, for a guardsmen, 'discarding your gun' means punishment duty or just plain getting shot).
Giving a glitchy machine a good solid thump (percussive maintenance) is a casual reaction used by multiple people.

Now taking things apart when its not your job, and putting it back together in a different way? That is tech heresy.
If you're lucky, an Ad Mech high-up takes notices and you get training and some robes. Elsewise you get the joy of being a servitor.

Terran Cow God wrote:
I have seen comments about how the Imperium is in a "Dark age of Technology" - how, for instance, a person would find a drive a car until it ran out of fuel, and then they would pray for it to start working again, otherwise leaving it alone, not knowing how to refuel. Same for weapons - fire until empty, then pray it works again, then throw it away. I've heard it called 'tech heresy' when someone hits the wrong 'trigger' on a gun and a box falls out of it, breaking it... or is it only heresy when you pick the box back up and put it back in? In any case, it is definitely heresy if you take another box that looks similar and put it in instead.

I actually like the man-powered battleship cannon loaders. I like the horse cavalry imperial guard. But guardsmen who do not know how their own equipment works is where I draw the line on suspension of disbelief - maybe an unpopular opinion. It reminds me of that idea that the Inquisition kills anyone who even knows about Chaos, which would basically be everyone (I had read that somewhere, I had also read that it was just purely untrue) - same thing here.

The Imperium isn’t in a Dark Age of Technology- that’s their name for an age roughly 25,000-20,000 years ago.

A person with a car would know how to operate the car, and how to refuel it; they just likely wouldn’t know the in-and-outs of the internal combustion engine (and even if they did, it wouldn’t be tech-heresy).

A lascharge coming out of a lasgun IS NOT tech-heresy. Nor is putting it back in. I’d like to know where you got that.

What happens to those who know about Chaos has varied through the years- sometimes it’s instant death, others it’s a non-issue. Not everybody knows of Chaos.

It's worth pointing out that the Dark Age of Technology is called "dark" because it relied heavily on artificial intelligence and androids, which ended the same way any sci-fi story involving robots (and not written by Asimov) does. From a scientific point of view, humanity at that point was way more enlightened than the Imperium has ever been. But at least they've learned their lesson; AI now stands for "abominable intelligence" and is the most heretic thing known to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

 Tiennos wrote:
It's worth pointing out that the Dark Age of Technology is called "dark" because it relied heavily on artificial intelligence and androids, which ended the same way any sci-fi story involving robots (and not written by Asimov) does. From a scientific point of view, humanity at that point was way more enlightened than the Imperium has ever been. But at least they've learned their lesson; AI now stands for "abominable intelligence" and is the most heretic thing known to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Its more 'Dark' in the sense of Dark Ages or Dark Continent, i.e. the people back home writing histories and using the term don't know much about it. More myth and legend than fact.

Who have personalities with Necrons?

I'm not sure what you meant about who have personalities with necrons but it's obvious necrons and humans can and do have dealings at time in non hostile manners.

There's always 'word of the silent king" in which a chapter master and the silent king made an arrangement, the silent king even imparted worlds of wisdom and encouragement to dante at the end.

Belisarius cawl had dealings with Trazyn, and trazyn even gave him the secret of activating necron obelisks, and it obviously worked as cawl did activate them on cadia if a few minutes or hours too late.

Now for trazyn to give what sure seems like a major clue to necron technology to cawl shows necrons can choose to work with humans(?) when it's beneficial.

I'd love a book that went into detail on that.

In the 83 codex there was a bit tht made it cheal there was a summit between necrons and the imperium, it was where the necron threatened to bury a human with scarabs if he disrespected them again, and it was said to have occurred at a summit.

So there can be some personal interactions between humans and necrons that are non hostile.

Reanimation protocol what is it to you? I have seen it as instant repair and I have seen it as a sequence of events that involves teleportation, repairing, and than re-deployment. Is there a right or wrong answer?

Are necron pariahs retconned? Or just never mentioned? Former means they don't exist, latter means they're "failed experiments"

 CKO wrote:
Reanimation protocol what is it to you? I have seen it as instant repair and I have seen it as a sequence of events that involves teleportation, repairing, and than re-deployment. Is there a right or wrong answer?

It's both.

Back in the first codex, models got a self-repair roll on their own. If they teleported through a monolith, they got to roll for self-repair again. I guess that function has shifted to the Ghost Arc instead.

And then you've got the various things like the Canoptek Spyders running around fixing various models...

 CKO wrote:
Reanimation protocol what is it to you? I have seen it as instant repair and I have seen it as a sequence of events that involves teleportation, repairing, and than re-deployment. Is there a right or wrong answer?

Definitely both. Heavier damage tends to be teleporting out, but various necrons have 'gotten up' from everything from lasguns to lascannons, and all types of bolters. Collapsing while self-repairs initiate seems fairly common.

Though thinking about it, I'm not sure more recent novels and stories have really described the process as much as they used to.

Indomitus talks about self-repair of necrons only once, and instead focuses a lot more on the power of their weapons. The ships repair a lot (self-repair or by canoptek constructs), but the one reference to warriors is in a summary of what the SM know about necrons which is "their self-repair abilities made them as tough as a Space Marine to disable." That's it.

The more frequent reference (14 times) is to casualities being 'resurrected.' Which is the 'animus' of the warrior being restored to _new_ bodies in orbit. Resurrection actually comes up a lot, though sometimes it refers to a 'resurrection field' around the necron body that can be destroyed or suppressed (usually by the overlord, but in one case the destroyer lord just 'ripped one apart'), and sometimes the ability is aided by canoptek critters. A couple references to 'resurrection ships' as if it were nu-Battlestar Galactica.
Its also stated the one frequent cause of personality death in the warriors is going through the Rez process too many times.

But Indomitus is a weirdly clumsy book. It sometimes get hyper detailed around characters that have models in the Indomitus box, other times it just skips or handwaves descriptions or plot points. Its much more of marketing product than any other GW novel I've read.

According to this reddit post
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/95x97e/explanation_for_necron_pariahs_disappearing/

Pariahs do exist in the universe so they're not retconned. Just deemed a failure by Crypteks and not fielded anymore.

roboemperor wrote:
According to this reddit post
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/95x97e/explanation_for_necron_pariahs_disappearing/

Pariahs do exist in the universe so they're not retconned. Just deemed a failure by Crypteks and not fielded anymore.

That second had reference via 1d4chan is bunk.

Caves of Ice is still being published, and features Pariahs.

Is there any chaos legions that sort of get along with other legions? I understand followers of different gods may have vastly different theological differences, and the iron warriors typically don’t trust anyone else, and word bearers probably alienated themselves via their intense evangelicalism, and the black legion... is probably the most likely to be willing to work with anyone, and conscripts anyone that they either subjugate or is willing to rock the eye of Horus...

Chaos is a dog eat dog philosophy. The legions are broken, even the ones that did not officially fracture are still divided in practice.

The only real loyalty a Chaos Space Marine has is to their god (or gods in Chaos Undivided's case).

 Lord Damocles wrote:
That second had reference via 1d4chan is bunk.

Caves of Ice is still being published, and features Pariahs.

Just to be clear, Necron Pariahs right? Not normal pariahs.

roboemperor wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
That second had reference via 1d4chan is bunk.

Caves of Ice is still being published, and features Pariahs.

Just to be clear, Necron Pariahs right? Not normal pariahs.

I guess both if you count Jurgen.

 Tyran wrote:
Chaos is a dog eat dog philosophy. The legions are broken, even the ones that did not officially fracture are still divided in practice.

The only real loyalty a Chaos Space Marine has is to their god (or gods in Chaos Undivided's case).

Or no one, in a couple cases.


Though I'd argue Black Legion fractured in the distant past, but is in better shape than its ever been. [Though would probably completely implode if Abaddon died]

Alpha Legion is, of course, the ultimate 'who knows?' situation.

DG and TS have rogue elements, but are pretty cohesive, all things considered.

EC, WE, and NL are definitely wrecked.

Iron Warriors seem in better shaped than those, but are mostly in directionless groups.
Its been a while since I checked on Word Bearers, but they seem amenable to cooperation, but also lack a guiding purpose.

Even with the BL you still have the ambitious Champion or Lord that wants to usurp Abaddon, and the same is true (even with lower stakes) all over the Chaos Legions.

The Gods don't give daemonhood for participation, meaning the ultimate goal of the average Chaos Space Marine can only be achieved by killing their way to glory, and their superiors are ultimately obstacles for that glory.

macluvin wrote:
Is there any chaos legions that sort of get along with other legions? I understand followers of different gods may have vastly different theological differences, and the iron warriors typically don’t trust anyone else, and word bearers probably alienated themselves via their intense evangelicalism, and the black legion... is probably the most likely to be willing to work with anyone, and conscripts anyone that they either subjugate or is willing to rock the eye of Horus...

Night lords are pretty fractured as a legion, but they have worked as sellswords for other legions on a large-scale basis.

The black legion and red corsairs have cooperated a few times (Pandora was one), which is a big deal as they're the two largest heretic astartes groups, and the crimson slaughter have worked with the black legion too without ever actually joining it.

Black Legion is very much having others work for it: Abbadon and his chosen always insist on being the dominant party in any alliance.

Dawn of War says Necrons turn Imperial Guardsmen into Necron Warriors.

Are there any other instances of non-pariahs turning into necrons?