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Long story short. Old once make a lot of aliens or modefy them: Orks, eldar, Jeriko etc.

Necrons find C'tan. C'tan Enchases Necrons. Old ones are wiped out.

Here it becomes very fussy for me.

In what order happens the following?

- Necrons overthrow C'tan.

- Necrons go to sleep. (I think the justefication in the old fluff was that enslavers ate al the food, so the C'tan wanted to hybernate until the locuses where over)

- The necrons try to build the pylons to shut out the warp (galaxy wide?), but gives up.

- The enslavers invade.

- Enslavers disapear?

- The orks fall into the race we know today. (Stil unclear if brain boys are a lost strain or just old once.)

What do the eldar do during all of this? Why on earth did they not wipe out the necrons? Did they at some point forget about it as they fornicated Slaanesh forward?

How long ago was all of this? I asume it is long before the year 30 K, because the universe was a relativly quiet place during the emperors crusade?

We've had the phrase 'millions of years' mentioned before, so a VERY long time ago.

Orks and eldar were 'made' - or at least 'weaponised' by the old ones during the war. At the point the old ones went ka-splort the eldar were basically just a slave caste handed weapons with no idea how they worked (unlike the krork who were bred with that stuff wired in) and told "go that way and stab the shiny ones". Centuries or even millenia could have passed before their population recovered from the enslaver devastation and they figured out enough of the left-over old one teachings and artefacts, or developed the science themselves, by which time the Necrons were stashed away and hidden.

What you lay down does not read as a time line.

The Enslavers invaded during the fight between the Necrons and Old Ones. It's all said to have gone wrong for the Old Ones during this time as they were fighting off the Necrons, C'Tan and Enslavers simultaneously. Around this time the Necrons use Dolmen Gates to breach the Webway at which point the Old Ones have nowhere to hide and their one advantage against the Necrons is lost.

The Necrons defeated the Old Ones and then immediately turned on the C'Tan as they feasted on the Old Ones' spent life force. When the C'Tan were finally shattered and captured, the Necrons began the process of building the stasis crypts. They were beaten and battered by this point, stretched thin from the long War in Heaven. They could see at this time that the Aeldar were entering their Golden Age and the Silent King opted to have the Necrons sleep for ~60 million years until the Aeldari were in decline and they were strong enough to take back the Galaxy.

If the eldar entered a golden age, is that not a bad time to go to sleep? Why did the necrons not kill the eldar systematically?

At the time, they would have lost, or so goes the theory.

The Eldar empire was defeated by it's own success. Any outside threat would have just strengthened/prolonged it.

Who would have lost in the throw down? The eldar or the necrons? For the necrons to hope they will be undisturbed sounds like a bad plan. For the eldar shunning them indefenetly sounds like a plan doomed for failure. They can see the future, they know they will wake up at some point.

 Niiai wrote:
Who would have lost in the throw down? The eldar or the necrons? For the necrons to hope they will be undisturbed sounds like a bad plan. For the eldar shunning them indefenetly sounds like a plan doomed for failure. They can see the future, they know they will wake up at some point.

From the 8th editon necron dex:

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So basically, the Necrons had a civil war before they had finished the job and wiped out the Old One's allies, and were too weakened to win afterwards. So they hid for 60 million years

Sound about right?

Yeah I suppose so. Unless the Silent King had some form of precognition it seemed very bold. But necrons have all sort of tech, he might very well have.

Why did the eldars not seek them out and destroy them?

They did for a while but eventually the knowledge of Necrons faded and the eldar were over confident that nothing could ever hurt them so they stopped. I think Alitioc were the craftworld with the best preserved knowledge of the necrons.

I suppose with all the anti-warp technology of the Necrons, they could hide from the Eldar better than anyone. Therefore, Eldar hunters would have to manually search every godforsaken barren ball of rock in the middle of nowhere to root them out- their psychic means of doing so likely heavily neutered by counter-tech.

The galaxy is massive afterall.

Also, I'm not seeing much in Eldar fluff about them hunting down and exterminating races. Putting them in their place is suggested, as more of a gardener than an exterminator.

As for Eldar foreseeing a potential resurgence of Necrons - whatever reason that kept them from stopping The Fall would be the reason they didn't stop the Necrons.

There are suggestions that seeing the future was harder and not heeded as much pre-fall. THere's also the possibility that it was seen, but no "immediate" action was taken because there were other things they chose to do.

Keep in mind the Exodites and later the Craftworlders saw that bad things would happen to the Empire and left it - whether that was mundane Doom and Gloom demigogs, actual prophesy/foresight, or a mix thereof isn't 100% clear. But it does show that there was a belief that the Empire would fall, and the Eldar people - as a whole, at least - did not act to prevent it.

Bharring wrote:
Also, I'm not seeing much in Eldar fluff about them hunting down and exterminating races. Putting them in their place is suggested, as more of a gardener than an exterminator.

Whilst this was generally true, they might have been a little more willing to exterminate the Necrons after they posed such a massive threat. They had just wiped out both the the Eldars' and their own super powerful masters! I would think it would've been mighty prudent for the now dominant Eldar to wipe out the remnants of this incredibly powerful, warmongering race.

The lengths the Necrons went to to hide shows that the Eldar must've been in a pretty vengeful mood. If they were content to leave the Necrons in their own creche in the corner of the galaxy (like mankind later) the Necrons likely would not have needed to scatter themselves into well hidden, protected stasis worlds. Necrons were the only race in the galaxy able to pose a serious threat to pre-Fall Eldar after all.

It seems to me that both are true. Eldar did want to exterminate the Necrons, but weren't as focused on it as we might think they should have been. Also, the Necrons went to great lengths to hide from the Eldar Empire.

Like most of real history, most events have more than one cause/factor.

Bharring wrote:
It seems to me that both are true. Eldar did want to exterminate the Necrons, but weren't as focused on it as we might think they should have been. Also, the Necrons went to great lengths to hide from the Eldar Empire.

Like most of real history, most events have more than one cause/factor.

I agree on all points


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I wouldn't be surprised if there was even a large faction of war-weary Eldar who were happy to focus on rebuilding and consolidating their new-found dominance following the apocalyptic War in Heaven, and just leave the surviving Necrons be.

Continuing to devote resources into fighting a retreating, spent threat probably isn't very popular when your entire civilisation needs to rebuild it's technological independence after losing their overloads.

 Haighus wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Also, I'm not seeing much in Eldar fluff about them hunting down and exterminating races. Putting them in their place is suggested, as more of a gardener than an exterminator.

Whilst this was generally true, they might have been a little more willing to exterminate the Necrons after they posed such a massive threat. They had just wiped out both the the Eldars' and their own super powerful masters! I would think it would've been mighty prudent for the now dominant Eldar to wipe out the remnants of this incredibly powerful, warmongering race.

The lengths the Necrons went to to hide shows that the Eldar must've been in a pretty vengeful mood. If they were content to leave the Necrons in their own creche in the corner of the galaxy (like mankind later) the Necrons likely would not have needed to scatter themselves into well hidden, protected stasis worlds. Necrons were the only race in the galaxy able to pose a serious threat to pre-Fall Eldar after all.

They did indeed hunt them down to some extent.


flip a coin & roll a die
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So why dident they predict that they would return/the fall of the eldar?

1. Seeing 60 million years into the future might be a bit much.

2. We dont know if they had any seers back then.

Remember that the different warrior paths are only 10K years old. The path of the seer/witch might not be much older than that.

To clarify, it's the Paths that are only 10k years old, with the Warrior paths being a subset.

The Path of the Seer isn't a Warrior path. In fact, until the SpiritSeer was added, the only people on the Path of the Seer that had tabletop rules were those lost to it (Farseers), and those who've previously been on a Path of Khaine (Warlocks).

Bharring wrote:
To clarify, it's the Paths that are only 10k years old, with the Warrior paths being a subset.

A subset? No.

The first aspect shrine was founded right after the fall by the phoenix lord Asurmen.

The Path of the Seer isn't a Warrior path.

It depends on the seer path. Warlocks are warrior-seers.

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That said, I just tried to point out that we do not know when the first seers came to be.

Andersp90 wrote:

That said, I just tried to point out that we do not know when the first seers came to be.

Very true. We know that Eldrad was already an accomplished Farseer by the outbreak of the Horus Heresy which was only a couple of hundred years after the Fall. Either Seers existed in some fashion pre-Fall or the Eldar became very good at it, very quickly.

 Karhedron wrote:

Andersp90 wrote:

That said, I just tried to point out that we do not know when the first seers came to be.

Either Seers existed in some fashion pre-Fall or the Eldar became very good at it, very quickly.

The aspect shrines came about pretty quickly.

But yea, I also think they had something akin to seers, pre-fall.

 Karhedron wrote:

Andersp90 wrote:

That said, I just tried to point out that we do not know when the first seers came to be.

Very true. We know that Eldrad was already an accomplished Farseer by the outbreak of the Horus Heresy which was only a couple of hundred years after the Fall. Either Seers existed in some fashion pre-Fall or the Eldar became very good at it, very quickly.

I guess this bit answers it to some extent.

From the new ynnari book:

Well from what I remember the Enslavers pretty much brought an end to most life in the Galaxy. So everyone had to focus on survival and rebuilding....Eons perhaps passed before any race was of mind to wipe out the sleeping Necrons, By then I doubt it was of much urgency.