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So when necrons attack a planet, and or it's an awakened tomb world. How killy are they? I know they (attempt) to kill all sentient life, but I assume they don't worry so much about plants and animals? can there be a jungle tomb world? or do necron worlds result in scorched earth and deserts.

Good question. I guess it's the sentience rather than biomatter - unlike Tyranids who devour all biomatter.

I don't know for certain, though. Not steeped in Necron lore.

I don't think they waste the effort on pine trees. For the most part, it seems to me like their primary goal is to fuel themselves along until they can fix their predicament or improve their situation (the ones that want to, at least). They're smart enough to realize that some organic life is going to have to be around because they might need to terraform worlds for their future empire to survive.

IIRC lots of tomb worlds are dead worlds because the Necrons did it on purpose to avoid people coming and settling on their tomb worlds while asleep. I don't think I ever read that they still do it now they are Awakening nor that they need it. I think a jungle tomb world or an oceanic tomb world could totally be.
But that's was oldcrons, when they were an interesting faction.
Don't know for now.

Personally, I always imagined Necrons to be extremely lethal towards all life. Literally paving over entire planets for their sterile tomb cities. They would crush a plant underfoot for the crime of sullying the pavement. Remember this is the race that was so bitter that they killed everything, including their own gods.

Necrons don't care enough that the writers thought it necessary to comment on whether Necrons enjoy non-sentient vegetation. It's probably down to the individual lord of a province or world whether he chooses to exterminates any existing vegetation. On the other hand I could certainly also imagine a crazy Necron botanist that gathers plants in an effort to make a super plant body for him to transfer his intelligence to or just to have the most amazing plant collection in the galaxy.

As far as sentient life goes it varies, most dynasties exterminate any sentient life they come across, some trade and/or ally with them like Mephrit did when they needed to repel a Tyranid attack. Some Dynasties enslave their enemies, others, like Novokh, might just ask the inhabitants of a planet they want to conquer to evacuate so they don't need to bother exterminating them.

Sometimes it might just come down to practicality, is it more practical to leave any sentient life on the planet to themselves or to go out and hunt them down, drown the atmosphere in poison or destroy the atmosphere so organisms that need oxygen die? Necron Pylons can teleport, having zones ready for the deployment of these to repel voidcraft might be an important consideration, so you might have a lush jungle with craters scattered across the world with fortifications set up to repel attackers from the jungle. Setting a jungle on fire would destroy all AM infantry pretty quick, it'd be a cheap defensive option, just wait a thousand years and you have your jungle back after setting a part of it on fire.

In the book Dead Men Walking, the Necrons were attacking only imperial soldiers or those who had weapons, leaving the civilians alone most of the time as they did not pose an immediate threat. Except for the Flayed ones. They made no difference.
Note it was in the early days and weeks after the Necrons awakened. I'm quite sure they later killed all survivors after they dealt with all pockets of organized resistance.

The same would likely apply to any non-sentient life. If there was some predators threatening them, they would likely kill on sight, but a random space-bunny hopping around, chewing grass would be left alone. Unless it would be on the planet known as Caerbannog.

Again, it depends on the Lord.

It's exceptionally variable depending on which dynasty, or even which individual Necron heirarch is involved. Some will wipe every molecule of organic life from existence on a world, while others will conquer and rule over existing sentient populations without blinking an eye.

The necrons will harvest all sapient life for their C’Tan masters to consume. Whether this means shooting them all or just neutralizing the resisting troops and corralling the rest depends on whether or not Gauss Flayers actually work as pattern storage devices as was hinted.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The necrons will harvest all sapient life for their C’Tan masters to consume. Whether this means shooting them all or just neutralizing the resisting troops and corralling the rest depends on whether or not Gauss Flayers actually work as pattern storage devices as was hinted.

C'tan masters? Methinks you need to go back a reread the Necron lore. The C'tan definitely are not in charge.

They were when the lore was still decent.

xenoterracide wrote:
So when necrons attack a planet, and or it's an awakened tomb world. How killy are they? I know they (attempt) to kill all sentient life, but I assume they don't worry so much about plants and animals? can there be a jungle tomb world? or do necron worlds result in scorched earth and deserts.

There's pictures of this very thing in the FW necron book - the Fall of Orpheus.

xenoterracide wrote:
So when necrons attack a planet, and or it's an awakened tomb world. How killy are they? I know they (attempt) to kill all sentient life, but I assume they don't worry so much about plants and animals? can there be a jungle tomb world? or do necron worlds result in scorched earth and deserts.

They are at least five killy, but no more than 14 killy.

Depends on the planet and the Dynasty. They tended to leave them less than habitable so others would be less likely to settle there.

That being said, Necrons in the codex have awoken, found people living on the surface, and issued ultimatums to make them leave, and then they attack when refused.

So, I don't think they destroy flora and fauna that don't bother them, but tended to sleep on inhospitable worlds.

I liked the summary from DC:

Depends on the dynasty but usually necrons do not care about fauna and flora -if anything they might as well build planet spanning xenotech-cities over it once cleansed-.

They don't even necesseraly get mad at occupiers at first and many phaerons will gladly let them evacuate rather than wasting time wiping them.

It's not even clearly stated that their aim is to get rid of sentient life; they tthemselves would like to regain flesh bodies, and could just as well use other races as slaves once they've been gauss-weaponed into submission.

That's for the rebooted lore. As of the old lore, their aim was essentially to feed the C'Tan souls, so anything with a spare soul to give was to be gunned down.

Does the new lore bother explaining why getting flesh bodies is so hard for them? Considering the lore it's like watching a genius try and fit a triangle through a square hole.

In GorkaMorka the Necrons decided to actually Protect the Digganobz for ..... Some fething reason

pm713 wrote:
Does the new lore bother explaining why getting flesh bodies is so hard for them? Considering the lore it's like watching a genius try and fit a triangle through a square hole.

Tbh honest they do not explain in details how it could be feasible or not. All we know is that the silent king and a few crypteks are trying very hard to, with as of now not the slightest success. As all thing in 40k this could be a layer of GrImDaRk to have them pursue a litteraly impossible quest to revert themselves back to their fleshy stuff.

pm713 wrote:
Does the new lore bother explaining why getting flesh bodies is so hard for them?

Because it might well be impossible? C'tan ate their souls, all Necrons are now is a few engrams of data running on very primitive, corrupted computers (Warriors) to slightly better, but still very imperfect ones (Lords). They could probably recreate Necrontyr (provided any genetic data survived) by breeding new generation, but they don't care about that - they want to take the data badly affected by time and transference, and stuff it back into a living body, soul and all. Try to do that when you don't understand warp and can't touch/sense it, and it becomes task of the blind trying to make perfect rainbow painting when they don't know where the paints are or if they even exist, all they can do is waving the brush blindly.

And I don't get why people say old, boring lore was in any way better. Necrons used to be a cheap, characterless knockoff of Terminators you couldn't customize in any way (if there was a race that could be painted one and only one color due to lore, it was Necrons) to make Your Dudes. New ones are not only vastly more grimdark (just look at Warriors - they are weakest Necrontyr, women, kids, infants, infirm, elderly, all trapped in metal body that does not obey them, with primitive brain that lost most of their memories, clouds their minds, and traps them in torture-like state), can be customized, but you can recreate old, tired junk by picking one of the several silent, insane dynasties controlled by AI/mad Lord/C'tan piece.

 Irbis wrote:
[quote=pm713 782746 10654362 null (if there was a race that could be painted one and only one color due to lore, it was Necrons) to make Your Dudes.

What? No, that's wrong. Read the old 3rd ed book, it gives a bunch of color schemes to choose from.
Also, really? Necrons could only be painted one color due to lore? I didn't know you could paint Blood Angels yellow, or Black Templars pink.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Irbis wrote:
. New ones are not only vastly more grimdark (just look at Warriors - they are weakest Necrontyr, women, kids, infants, infirm, elderly, all trapped in metal body that does not obey them, with primitive brain that lost most of their memories, clouds their minds, and traps them in torture-like state)

Pretty sure that was already in the old lore. Warriors were always civilians, immortals were always soldiers, lords were always nobility, even back then.
What the new lore ruined were flayed ones, who went from necrons remembering what they once were to hungry necrons. Its just that the flayed ones lore was in a white dwarf, not the codex.
Wraiths were convicted criminals and murderers, now they are robots. Except wraiths back then were scarier because they had a suite of surgical tools that they would use to extract "samples" from their victims, and due to their phase shift you'd never know the organs were removed until you performed an autopsy.
The old lore was more grimdark, you just had to look for it because a lot of it was outside of the codex.

 Irbis wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Does the new lore bother explaining why getting flesh bodies is so hard for them?

Because it might well be impossible? C'tan ate their souls, all Necrons are now is a few engrams of data running on very primitive, corrupted computers (Warriors) to slightly better, but still very imperfect ones (Lords). They could probably recreate Necrontyr (provided any genetic data survived) by breeding new generation, but they don't care about that - they want to take the data badly affected by time and transference, and stuff it back into a living body, soul and all. Try to do that when you don't understand warp and can't touch/sense it, and it becomes task of the blind trying to make perfect rainbow painting when they don't know where the paints are or if they even exist, all they can do is waving the brush blindly.

And I don't get why people say old, boring lore was in any way better. Necrons used to be a cheap, characterless knockoff of Terminators you couldn't customize in any way (if there was a race that could be painted one and only one color due to lore, it was Necrons) to make Your Dudes. New ones are not only vastly more grimdark (just look at Warriors - they are weakest Necrontyr, women, kids, infants, infirm, elderly, all trapped in metal body that does not obey them, with primitive brain that lost most of their memories, clouds their minds, and traps them in torture-like state), can be customized, but you can recreate old, tired junk by picking one of the several silent, insane dynasties controlled by AI/mad Lord/C'tan piece.

That's just flat out wrong. Newcrons are grimderp and for the most part boring.

Pretty sure that was already in the old lore. Warriors were always civilians, immortals were always soldiers, lords were always nobility, even back then.
What the new lore ruined were flayed ones, who went from necrons remembering what they once were to hungry necrons. Its just that the flayed ones lore was in a white dwarf, not the codex.
Wraiths were convicted criminals and murderers, now they are robots. Except wraiths back then were scarier because they had a suite of surgical tools that they would use to extract "samples" from their victims, and due to their phase shift you'd never know the organs were removed until you performed an autopsy.
The old lore was more grimdark, you just had to look for it because a lot of it was outside of the codex.

To me the newer lore is head an shoulders over the old lore because the necrons feel like an actual race, with more or less independant leaders, with agendas of their own, with more complex goals of restoring their mortality andtheir rule over the galaxy (plus the C'Tan enslavment shenanigan, oh boy I love that silly part).

Of course details such as who used to be who in their previous lifes or their technology existed already, but the general feel of the army was dully rendred to me, truly looking like mere genocidal grumpy robots. Plus I felt like we didn't need yet another race to simply destroy all life and ffed on them, I've always had the impression their were a bit infringing on the tyranids' reason to be.

Of course liking or not liking backgrounds is a matter of taste, and if anything the newer lore tastes better to me.

The old lore was superior, especially the background of Flayed Ones. The best thing about Newcrons is that they have more customizability and personality. Though, you could always say that the new lore is not a retcon, but rather a discovery. Thats how I chose to see it. It was believed all Crons were mindless killers, until Overlords started to awaken and/or slowly gain their personalities back. The Imperium simply just didnt know that part of the nature of Crons till later

Newcrons suck because of dolmen gates.

They went from very thematically in keeping with ctan reality bending tech, ftl flying and inertialess drives to having a poorly hijacked webway?

And then GW removed the Tyranid warp travel and gave THEM necron ftl? Just pointless.


They could have easily had it both ways without retconning necron. Background.

Just make the newcron dynasties those that rebelled against the oldcron ctan dictatorship.

You can keep the oldcron enslavement as the norm and introduce a rebellious faction.