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Think about it - if they had done this the Necrotyr wouldn't have literally searched the stars for a way to get back at the old ones. The C'Tan would never have been transferred to metal bodies and experienced the thrill of experiencing energy that wasn't that of a tasteless star. The old ones may or may not have still created their creations, but what they certainly wouldn't have done would to have invested these creations with extreme psychic potential out of desperation to defeat the C'Tan. Therefore the warp would not have been sent into a turmoil due to the 'psychic birth pains' of the new races. Thus chaos would not have risen (with the warp remaining calm).
The Necrotyr wouldn't be in their necron bodies, the old ones would have still been around to prevent the krork from devolving into orks, and discourage the eldar from their doomed path of excess. Everyone would have had access to the webways to traverse the galaxy. There would be no enslavers (retconned I know), warpstorms or chaos gods.
There would be fluffy bunnies and pretty pink unicorns everywhere.

Then the tyranids would arrive...

They call that game Hello Kitty Online.

Haha. Although seeing tyranids slaughter hello kitty would be rather amusing!

We always discuss how the emperor making this decision with angron, that decision with lorgar, not believing magnus etc made so much of a difference to the fate of the galaxy... but tbf the biggest decision in the history of the lore has to be the old ones not granting the necrotyr the secret of imortality imo.

So life would be banana time... ok

Poly Ranger wrote:
Haha. Although seeing tyranids slaughter hello kitty would be rather amusing!

We always discuss how the emperor making this decision with angron, that decision with lorgar, not believing magnus etc made so much of a difference to the fate of the galaxy... but tbf the biggest decision in the history of the lore has to be the old ones not granting the necrotyr the secret of imortality imo.

That is amazing!

Poly Ranger wrote:
Haha. Although seeing tyranids slaughter hello kitty would be rather amusing!

Implying Hello Kitty wouldn't slaughter the tyranids.

Kitty White is without fear, and utterly without mercy. Badtz Maru is, hidden within that dark, depressed shell, a slayer of worlds, a slaughterer without peer.

Someone needs to do that spoof!

Poly Ranger wrote:
Think about it - if they had done this the Necrotyr wouldn't have literally searched the stars for a way to get back at the old ones. The C'Tan would never have been transferred to metal bodies and experienced the thrill of experiencing energy that wasn't that of a tasteless star. The old ones may or may not have still created their creations, but what they certainly wouldn't have done would to have invested these creations with extreme psychic potential out of desperation to defeat the C'Tan. Therefore the warp would not have been sent into a turmoil due to the 'psychic birth pains' of the new races. Thus chaos would not have risen (with the warp remaining calm).
The Necrotyr wouldn't be in their necron bodies, the old ones would have still been around to prevent the krork from devolving into orks, and discourage the eldar from their doomed path of excess. Everyone would have had access to the webways to traverse the galaxy. There would be no enslavers (retconned I know), warpstorms or chaos gods.
There would be fluffy bunnies and pretty pink unicorns everywhere.

Then the tyranids would arrive...

Except for the fact that the Necrotyr were already a very hostile, warlike race to begin with, the only thing when they discovered that the old ones wouldn't give them immortality was to instead stop fighting each other and then try to murder them.

Hindsight might be a bit much, but understanding that giving long life to a species thats known for brutal warfare and willing to do everything they could out of spite to kill each other (and other races) miiiight be a bit of a bad idea.

Although it is said that it was jealousy and anger at their rejection that turned them against the Old Ones. If they had given them the gift of immortality, the jealousy and anger wouldn't have been there. Also it was their short lifespans which gave them their morbid outlook and agression towards each other and other races. Immortality could have been a cure for this.

Exactly that. If the Necrontyr had not been such donkey-caves to one another, after having demonstrated that they were willing to conquer, or eradicate, any other species they encountered, then maybe the Old Ones would have been more receptive. Instead, when they were told "no", the Necrontyr attacked the Old Ones... and ended up getting wtfspanked, until they encountered the C'Tan eating one of their stars.

Poly Ranger wrote:
Although it is said that it was jealousy and anger at their rejection that turned them against the Old Ones. If they had given them the gift of immortality, the jealousy and anger wouldn't have been there. Also it was their short lifespans which gave them their morbid outlook and agression towards each other and other races. Immortality could have been a cure for this.

To put it simply, giving something to a race that has its culture, it's tendencies towards violence, it's constant vigilance of hatred and extermination policies.

And you think all of that is going to go away all in one night because of one thing? That's pretty idealistic to think that, but as has been proven in our own history where we've given technology to those without it, it's usually ended up very poorly.

Even the Old Ones knew that likely after the immortality, they would have just begun a universal conquest and taken what they want, either trying to kill them still, or kill them in the end when they felt they were strong enough.

I got the impression that Necrontyr were a fast reproducing species (given their short lifespans and how quickly they bounced back in numbers after the Old Ones reduced them down to a few systems) which, if made immortal, would be a bad thing.

My head canon though is that the Tau were the end result of Old One experiments to fix the Necrontyr problems. The center working on them was forced to go into stasis during the second war, and some as yet unknown event caused the center to reactivate and attempt to finish the job. This would explain all the happy coincidences (lucky warp storm, a warp capable wreck located right on their doorstep), as well as the lack of psykers and exceptionally fast development.

They aren't immortal (or even long lived), but I'd suspect their lifespans are longer and more stable.

It seems like, given examples of the eldar, the Emperor, perpetuals, et al, that immortality involves being an extremely potent warp creature. The Old Ones would not have been able to do very much for the warp-blind necrontyr.

The request for immortality was just an excuse to move war. I bet that once immortal, they would have moved war by other means.

And by the way there were still C'tan around. And a lot of primitive races ready to step in. and the Tyranids, time and time and time after that.

The only way for the setting to be peaceful would be to stay completely lifeless.

I think the Necrons being "evil" comes from their soullessness, something that happened because of Memphet'ran.

They may not have turned out so bad if the Old Ones had helped them.

Imagine this, no evil Necrons, no evil C'tan, no Orks, no warp storms so no Age of Strife so no racist Imperium, no Chaos so no heresy so no Astronomican so no Tyranids. With Eldar supreme and beside the Old Ones. Peace.

According to Xenology the Eldar helped the Tau rise, but if they rose independently, this chain of events would not prevent the Tau from running around going pew pew.

Though the Tau are still minor and "nice", so yes, Hello Kitty 40k.

They were bad long before bio-transference. They were a warlike, conquering people that, when they had nothing else to conquer, turned on one another.

 Psienesis wrote:
They were bad long before bio-transference. They were a warlike, conquering people that, when they had nothing else to conquer, turned on one another.

It's like people gloss over that fact that they were practically desiring to conquer the Old Ones for what they had to begin with.

Indeed. Though part of that can be explained by the OldCrons vs NewCrons, as in OldCrons they just had 1 planet, which was irradiated, and they were all dying, and then the C'Tan showed up and turned them into Terminators to fight the Old Ones.

In the NewCrons, they were already a galaxy-spanning empire with hundreds of tribute-paying subject races and thousands of worlds, who got their ass kicked by the Old Ones when they went to war against them. In fact, the "they won't give us the secret of immortality!" reason might be a total lie, the Silent King may have set that up as a justification for war with the Old Ones, if only to turn his people's attention to an external enemy.

The C'Tan might have lied about their war with the Old Ones (it is the Deceiver who tells Szandrekh that they, too, lost a war against them... maybe we should team up?) and tricked the Necrons into coming up with the biotransference plan, as that sparked a civil war amongst their own kind before they could go to war against the Old Ones properly.