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1hadhq wrote:So we cant imagine the necrons coming from a single source, but were willing to believe humanity started from Terra
and is now on millions of worlds?

The necrons had maybe more time at their disposal than mankind had ( is 40k 40k AC ? ).

As I understood things, Necrons originated on a single planet, were translated into Necrons (much like people start getting made into Cybermen in Doctor Who) then kill all the sentient life in the galaxy and go to sleep for six billion years or something, during which time they do nothing.

Generalian wrote:
I'm guessing necrons vaporize your body and trap your soul within metal skelatons they create with scarabs. Kind of like necrons, but they convert only your flesh and not your soul.

Excuse me...what?

with a hazy memory: the necrons did orginate from a single planet. personally i would guess that they had colisised their own star system (so they had several planets of "people") when their sun began to die. they make their pact with the devil and were "necronised".
they then fought against the old ones alongside the C'Tan. once again, im guessing that at this point they were spread across the galaxy.
they were then awoken friom their slumber.
secondly:
when damage sufficently they will phase out to repair themselves. when this is not possible they are placed into statis until a new body can be created or their current body. if a new body is created their conscious is then transfered into their new body. this has the effect of degrading the indicidual necrons consciousness so repeated 'deaths' equals less 'independant thought'
i think that sums it up as i said its from my memory and i cant remember where its from oringally

Sorry to be a donkey cave, but hey there's only a million or so spehs marines and they seem to be everywhere! (hurr! )

So perhaps it's not too surpriseing that a couple of billion necrons, who can teleport, pop up all over the place too.

And I can see the point people make about self repairing necrons too, they always seem to come back.

Don't tell me you fell for the Imperial propaganda too?

There are zillions of Space Marines.

On page 11 of the necron codex it says that after the sisters fought the necrons no trace of the enemy was found, so basically they pick up their dead after a fight. On page 24 in the necrontyr part it says that they colonized other planets, so they did in fact have something like an empire.

P.s. I have the codex your arguments are invalid.

I can't remember where, but there was some possibly unofficial fluff establishing that Necrons harvest sentients for their bioelectricity(yes, sounds like The Matrix, I know, but I'm quite sure that fluff is out there).

Anyway, I agree with Flailing Flagellant(?). There have simply been too many tombs discovered, each one housing countless 'crons., for the single planet theory to hold. I'm quite sure they didn't have some interstellar empire, but once their "allegiance" with the C'tan was solidified, they began conquering and harvesting in wholesale.

The codex states that the spread of the necrontyr was before the deal with the c'tan, that's how they made contact with the eldar.

Um, made contact with the Eldar? The Eldar wouldn't have even existed in the time of Necrontyr.

They did, they were created to fight the C'Tan.

Maybe there is some sort of large scale teleporter array in the tombworlds. They're big to hold the technology, and they each have a standing guard of a few thousand holding the entrance area. If that group is insufficient to deal with the threat, more necrons are teleported in from other tombworlds.

Hey, a highly mobile force works for marines, with similar numbers. *snickers*

I believe that after the first Necrontyr were turned, they began to create more mechanical Necrons, to the point where they are purely machines. The few remaining "turned" Necrons (Those who gave up their fleshy bodies) are amongst the ranks of the "elites" (Immortals, Destroyers, etc.) excluding Pariahs, of course.

It should also be noted that, and although it's "unofficial", almost every single fluff account of a Necron incursion stresses endless numbers.

It could just when they leave a certain part of the battlefield they necron repair themselves thus endless numbers.

Also Ive read somewere that the tombworlds work like a bee hive to a certain point, there's the mining lord,fighting and a couple others that do other stuff but when one lord is destroyed and there is none to take its place the others function wierd aka the lord that makes more machines die but the miner still continues to mine even though there's nothing to do with it.

On some worlds they use it to train guards aka crons go to the same place same time each day, they were told there by there lord but then the lord dies so they keep doing it so Old Commy tells the guard to shoot at them and train them the guard go home necrons repair and go home, tomorrow it happens again.

This may sound dumb but what are Necrontyr, I know they are the orriginal Necrons but what are they?

The Necrontyr are an alien race from the same time as the old ones and had a realy short life expatacnty (spelling?), and tried to off the old ones and insert the rest of necron fluff from that point.

Necrons never, ever, ever die.

They warp out and are repaired or have their bodies replaced, but their mind remains intact. Necrontyr had a small empire, and thus probably had a galactic population of several hundred million or possibly a trillion or two.

Seeing as only, like, 10 tombworlds have been found, and with an exorbitant estimate that each has like a million necron in them, that still means you would have several thousand tomb worlds out there. Humans, being the prolific breeders they are, will run across them eventually, it's just a mathematical certainty.

Some people are talking about endless numbers here - but lets think of it this way. There are 6.5 billion people on earth (one planet) at this time. If we were all instantly converted into Necrons, that would be 6.5 BILLION necrons. That's 6.5 thousand million necrons. This is assuming that the Necrontyr were confined to one earth-sized planet with an earth-sized population.

Assuming the above is true, you could have 6,500 tomb worlds with a million necrons each. That is one of the things about Orks, Tyranids, and Crons that makes them so alien. Unlike Humans, there are no civilians. There are no non-combatants. EVERYTHING fights. Add in Monoliths, WBB, Spyders, swarms of scarabs and pariahs, as well as their teleportation technology and penchant for striking before large forces are gathered to oppose them and "endless numbers" becomes very real, very quickly.

I think that GW, with it's Imperium/Marinez centric fluff, has missed. The greatest wars of the galaxy don't involve humans at all. Endless Tyranid and Ork genocidal campaigns. Millions of Necrons endlessly battling trillions of Nids. In the 41st millenium, the Imperium doesn't know a damn thing about war.

Nachturnus wrote:Necrons never, ever, ever die.

They warp out and are repaired or have their bodies replaced, but their mind remains intact. Necrontyr had a small empire, and thus probably had a galactic population of several hundred million or possibly a trillion or two.

Seeing as only, like, 10 tombworlds have been found, and with an exorbitant estimate that each has like a million necron in them, that still means you would have several thousand tomb worlds out there. Humans, being the prolific breeders they are, will run across them eventually, it's just a mathematical certainty.

According to the fluff I remember, Necrons suffer degradation of their recorded memories and intelligence each time they are destroyed and transferred to a new body and sometimes due to systems failures.

Consequently the number of Necron 'souls' must be finite and falling, if they cannot replace their 'souls' from another source.

Let's assume the original Necron population was 6 billion, and there were 1,000,000 inhabitable worlds in the Galaxy, and they set up Tomb complexes on 1% of them.

That gives you a population of 60,000 Necrons per Tomb World, which isn't actually all that many. And there is only 1% chance of establishing a colony on a tomb world.

Can Necrons teleport between different solar systems?

Remember that they had (and still have) a very advanced dimensional technology, so thay can stockage lots and lots of people and weapons in a very little place. And thay had a very large imperium: if in the actual Earth lives near 6000 million people, imagine with some planets and over-poblationed.

Yes, I understand.

But, the Necrons never had a huge population, because of their short lifespan, and did not colonise many planets.

If we assume there were 60 billion Necrons, it is still only 600,000 on each of 10,000 Tomb world, or 60,000 on each 100,000 Tomb worlds which is only 10% of inhabitable worlds in the Galaxy.

Necrontyr had technology that makes human minds boggle. If we have hive worlds that have a population of 200+ billion, then the necrontyr certainly did.

Kilkrazy wrote:Yes, I understand.

But, the Necrons never had a huge population, because of their short lifespan, and did not colonise many planets.

If we assume there were 60 billion Necrons, it is still only 600,000 on each of 10,000 Tomb world, or 60,000 on each 100,000 Tomb worlds which is only 10% of inhabitable worlds in the Galaxy.

Maybe youre numbers of tomb worlds are not valid?
Any source ?

IIRC, Tomb worlds are often less inhabitable or really out on the fringes of the galaxy.

Could be wrong, but I thougth Tomb worlds were resting places for Ctan. And i doubt those starvampires had
that many members... at least in the age of man, there may be only 4 C'Tan.

The map in the BRB has just 15 tomb worlds, half of them inactive.
Now, 60.000.000.000 : 15 = 4.000.000.000
If we only know some, maybe 60.000.000.000 : 60 = 1.000.000.000

Seems enough necrons per world for me.

The Necrontyr actually had somewhat of a Galaxy-spanning Empire. It says somthing like that in their codex.
Also the Necrontyr had execptionally large birth and death rates. This reflects the many deaths inflicted by their star's radiation.

lordrevege wrote:The Necrontyr actually had somewhat of a Galaxy-spanning Empire. It says somthing like that in their codex.
Also the Necrontyr had execptionally large birth and death rates. This reflects the many deaths inflicted by their star's radiation.

Having a galaxy spanning empire seems logically inconsistent with being turned into Necrons and harvesting large amounts of sentient life throughout the galaxy. In the sense that having swarmed all over the galaxy, they would have killed most of the sentients before becoming Necrons with the mission of killing all sentients.

Having a large birth rate and a large death rate balance out to some degree. The important thing is how many Necrontyr were alive at the time the C'Tan changed them into Necrons.

I posited the number of tomb worlds for the sake of constructing a logical argument. We know there aren't heaps of tomb worlds or lots more would already have been discovered. This is another argument against the galaxy spanning empire theory.

Kilkrazy wrote:According to the fluff I remember, Necrons suffer degradation of their recorded memories and intelligence each time they are destroyed and transferred to a new body and sometimes due to systems failures.

Consequently the number of Necron 'souls' must be finite and falling, if they cannot replace their 'souls' from another source.

What if the original Necron warriors had been intelligent and individualistic fighters and over the thousands of years of fighting and dieing the warriors had been reduced to the current soulless killing machines? That would fit the gradual degradation of memories and intelligence just as well while not reducing their numbers or current effectiveness. Really, it might even be more horrific than losing all of their soul and individuality at the start.

Yes, that is the implication.

However, it poses the question of what happens once the lowest grade Necron souls become even further decayed. There must be a point at which they are incapable of operating any useful machinery.

Perhaps there's a "floor" on the possible decay, being it the soulless killing machines that can only obey without questions a Necron Lord.

Still, this theory would have to include said Lords, and then eventually all of the Necrons would be "standard Necron Warriors". Would at this point be lead by the C'tan themselves?

Kilkrazy wrote:But, the Necrons never had a huge population, because of their short lifespan, and did not colonise many planets.

Actually short lived species tend to have larger populations.

Look at Eldar, they are long lived, so have a small population.
Humans live a short time and have astounding population.

solkan wrote:What if the original Necron warriors had been intelligent and individualistic fighters and over the thousands of years of fighting and dieing the warriors had been reduced to the current soulless killing machines? That would fit the gradual degradation of memories and intelligence just as well while not reducing their numbers or current effectiveness. Really, it might even be more horrific than losing all of their soul and individuality at the start.

It is still possible that there are tombworlds out there have populations that haven't died very often so are still operating at full capacity.

I think it would be cool if in the new book you could have different varients of basic warriors,
the highly sapient versions (that still have a personnality, etc.)
and the ones that have died so often that they are mere automatons (glorified AIs, though I doubt they would ever become completely useless).

Thanatos_elNyx wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:But, the Necrons never had a huge population, because of their short lifespan, and did not colonise many planets.

Actually short lived species tend to have larger populations.

Look at Eldar, they are long lived, so have a small population.
Humans live a short time and have astounding population.

solkan wrote:What if the original Necron warriors had been intelligent and individualistic fighters and over the thousands of years of fighting and dieing the warriors had been reduced to the current soulless killing machines? That would fit the gradual degradation of memories and intelligence just as well while not reducing their numbers or current effectiveness. Really, it might even be more horrific than losing all of their soul and individuality at the start.

It is still possible that there are tombworlds out there have populations that haven't died very often so are still operating at full capacity.

I think it would be cool if in the new book you could have different varients of basic warriors,
the highly sapient versions (that still have a personnality, etc.)
and the ones that have died so often that they are mere automatons (glorified AIs, though I doubt they would ever become completely useless).

I can see people complaining already: you turned necrons from marines that get back up to Chaos legions that get back up. You've got the tough ones, the choppy ones, the shooty ones.... I like your idea though

I alway thought they were just like a Galatic Fruit-Cake.
There is only a small number of them and just just phase out and go the the next place they are unwanted