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so do the necrons have a soul or dont they?
can they think for themselves?

what do they do all the time ??
what do they do when they "harvest" a planet?

They have no free will, however the further up the chain of command the more free will a Necron has.
When they aren't doing anything they wait to be told to do something.

purplefood wrote:They have no free will, however the further up the chain of command the more free will a Necron has.
When they aren't doing anything they wait to be told to do something.

Pretty much. The average warrior has little awareness and is for most purposes a robot. Controlled by the will of the necron lords. The higher echelons of those are meant to be more aware. But still relentless in service to their ctan masters. They are meant to scour all sentient life from a planet when they harvest them.

I think it was DoW that says when the Necrons harvest a planet they have machines that actually suck the life energy out of what is living there and turn it into a barren waste land hence why most Tomb Worlds are desserts.

Now I don't think they can just turn it on and then everything with a life force is SOL because in the Necron codex it shows slaves being led into a Necron building so I think they have a seperate process for harvesting sentient beings.

As was said above when the Necrons aren't active they don't really do anything but wait for an inititive or command. I'm sure there are other "members" of the Necron forces that are active during thousands of years like the Tomb Spyders. Outside of combat Tomb Spyders are created to maintain the tombs of the Necrons during their stasis.

And again Besides Lords the Necrons don't have individual personalities. The new fluff from the rule book indicates that when a Necron body is damaged beyond prepare their conciousness is transfered to a new body almost like downloading a program from a old computer to a new one. But the replication process is flawed and so each time a Necron is transfered into a new body they loose a little bit more of themselves (what little remains anyway).

Now the Necron Lords on the other hand where amongst the first of the Necrontyr to be made into Necrons and where some of the most favored of the C'tans servants. This combined with the better resources put into protecting/creating a Lord means that they probably aren't damaged to the point where they need to be transfered to a new body so they keep more of their personailities. This can also lead them to go insane and see themselves as gods since they are around for millions of years.

So the Necrons are essentially the Galactus of the Warhammer 40k Universe?

Red Comet wrote:So the Necrons are essentially the Galactus of the Warhammer 40k Universe?

The C'tan are actually.

Question here: how exactly do the Necrons "harvest worlds" for the C'tan? Unlike the Tyranids who I've read about having an elaborate system of biomass processing to the Hive Fleets, I've yet to see what the Necrons do to a world besides lay it to waste and yet apparently they're feeding the C'tan.

The other note was how even Necron Lords can be programmed by the C'tan to fulfil a purpose without faltering, and without free will.

Mentioned in the Fluff is an IG world where Necrons come out at a specified time of the month down to the minute, and the IG camp across the plain from their tomb and use them for target practice.

severedblue wrote:The other note was how even Necron Lords can be programmed by the C'tan to fulfil a purpose without faltering, and without free will.

Mentioned in the Fluff is an IG world where Necrons come out at a specified time of the month down to the minute, and the IG camp across the plain from their tomb and use them for target practice.

That one was a broken Tombworld which had had its Lord lost and Phasing technology scrambled to the point that it functions at now. It also varies by author which Necron Lords have free will, the Platinum only for some and all of them for others. To each their own I guess.

Well keep in mind there isn't alot of fluff about the Necrons, I think the updates in the rule book are the first pieces of new fluff about the Necrons themselves (and not just battle that they partake in) since the last Necron codex. So far the exact way that the Necrons harvest hasen't really been discussed besides how they drain stars (a ship syphons off energy from the star untill its containers are full then it takes that energy to a pyramid where presumably it's stored and they just ferry the energy back and forth untill the star dies).

Now like I said the DoW after campaign for the Necrons talks about how they use machines to drain the life energy of every thing on a planet. So while the Tyranids consume bio matter and digest it the Necrons just drain it of it's life energy and leave it to rot/decay.

And there are differant ranked Necron Lords who are in charge of differant sized groups and differant tasks (Platinum, Gold Silver et.) based off of the command node. If a Necron Lord is destroyed with no way of repairing him then the Lord that was directly under him in rank assumes his duties (like backing up your files on a computer if you lose one you have another to do the same thing).

megaorkwarboss wrote:
so do the necrons have a soul or dont they?
can they think for themselves?

what do they do all the time ??
what do they do when they "harvest" a planet?

1. Necrontyr had and have no reflection in the Warp, no echo that indicates a soul. All a Necron is, is a mind reduced to streams of data running through wires in a metal shell.
2. A Necron freshly forged has a mind still, but dulled from the transformation. With each death and each reconstruction, that mind is dulled further, till they become little more than a shambling robot.
3. When they're not waging war on the rest of the universe and all of creation, they're sleeping. Now they're awaking, the Harvest resumes, a task that started 2.5 billion years ago and will never be completed until all of the universe has been consumed by the C'Tan.
4. Life is an energy form, like heat, or light, or electricity. The Necrons destroy all opposition, then they take all the life that is left and harvest it. They convert it to an easily consumable energy and feed the soulforges. Or, if "Hellforged" is to be believed, a big grey heart with a Platinum Lord inside. A planet harvested by Necrons is a desert because all life is reduced to a withered... nothing.

The Necrontyr must have had some kind of soul as they were once living beings and felt emotion. They may not have had psychics and so registered little in the warp but they must have had souls to be imprisoned in the warrior bodies they inhabit now.

purplefood wrote:The Necrontyr must have had some kind of soul as they were once living beings and felt emotion. They may not have had psychics and so registered little in the warp but they must have had souls to be imprisoned in the warrior bodies they inhabit now.

I don't think that feeling emotion is the 40K definition of having a soul

BluntmanDC wrote:

purplefood wrote:The Necrontyr must have had some kind of soul as they were once living beings and felt emotion. They may not have had psychics and so registered little in the warp but they must have had souls to be imprisoned in the warrior bodies they inhabit now.

I don't think that feeling emotion is the 40K definition of having a soul

Yeah probably not...
But still something that belonged to them got stuck inside the machines and considering the whole soul fetish Necrons have it's probably that...

Yes but you have to remember, humans with the pariah gene also have no soul.

Krellnus wrote:Yes but you have to remember, humans with the pariah gene also have no soul.

They have a soul, they just are the opposite of psykers. They show up less int he warp than even normal humans and much less than psykers.
It says on lexicanum "their lifeforce was encased in lving metal bodies" i am gonna guess that lifeforce=soul but it may not... 40k is generally a bit vague aout everything so go figure.

They're prolly the Tau.
Just my crazy theory.

purplefood wrote:

Krellnus wrote:Yes but you have to remember, humans with the pariah gene also have no soul.

They have a soul, they just are the opposite of psykers. They show up less int he warp than even normal humans and much less than psykers.
It says on lexicanum "their lifeforce was encased in lving metal bodies" i am gonna guess that lifeforce=soul but it may not... 40k is generally a bit vague aout everything so go figure.

My understanding of it is that in 40K, lifeforce is just another type of energy, and that a soul is an echo in the warp. You need to be alive to have a soul, but you don't need to have a soul to be alive.

When do they actually start harvesting? I just read Dead Men Walking and all the Necrons did is kill everything. Is there some sort of soul trap/sink they use to adsorb the souls of the killed or something?

the way I see it is that they have souls but the wrap doesn't see them because they show no emotion, remember the warp is created by human (and others) emotions each god represents an emotion he feeds off, since necron don't have any emotions (or haven't used any in AGES) they wont show up in the warp.



think of it this way each necron warrior is basically a computer powered by the necrotyr life-force (soul etc whatever you call it)

If the Necrontyr had souls the Necrons probably don't. When the Necrontyr where transfered into their mechanical bodies their minds where transfered (hence why they lose parts of themselves, if it was their soul this probably woulden't happen) and their bodies died which would have sent their souls to the Warp. And it wasen't their souls that where transfered as Purplefood suggests because it was the C'tan who transfered the Necrontyr to their no bodies and the C'tan have absolutly no power over the warp (souls are warp domain)

However keep in mind that every creature that has been actually proven to having a connection to the Warp (humans of every kind, Orks and Eldar) was created by the Old Ones who where masters of magic and created each of their races to have that same connection. The Necrontyr wern't created by the Old Ones and so it's very plausible to assume that they never had souls (which in the 40k universe is a beings connection to the Warp).

Someone said above that the Necrons harvest souls. This is wrong since the only reason there is a harvest is to feed the C'tan, again the C'tan have no power over the warp and so would have no way manipulating harvested souls. The Necrons harvest life energy which is something completly differant from a soul.

Fair point...

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote: there are differant ranked Necron Lords who are in charge of differant sized groups and differant tasks (Platinum, Gold Silver et.) .

bronze lords: simple lords who have some free will but if they fall in battle they can pick a simple warrior and upgrade him

Silver lords: lords that have had alot of experance and lead the necron armys in to battle

Gold lords: rullers of the tomb worlds only seen in battles where they need to win

Platinum: Never seen thought thought to of to been only second to the c'tan

Oh and you can never realy destroy a necron as they phase out and their is only one ever that had been captured but dissapered when a lord took the form of a high ranking offical and obtained data on the structure of orks,kroot,eldar,tyrinids and when it was all collected it raised the dammaged necron warrior and phased in more warriors. all that was left was blood stained walls