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Hello Dakka! So my friend wants to play 30k badly and is in the process of building a legion, but he also really likes his necrons and wants a lore-friendly way to use them in battles set in the great Crusade/Heresy time period. My question is: what evidence is there (if any) of Necrons activity during this time periods? Thanks bunch.

 agurus1 wrote:
Hello Dakka! So my friend wants to play 30k badly and is in the process of building a legion, but he also really likes his necrons and wants a lore-friendly way to use them in battles set in the great Crusade/Heresy time period. My question is: what evidence is there (if any) of Necrons activity during this time periods? Thanks bunch.

Barring the Silent King who was still off in exile atm (though he claimed to have met Sanguinius at some point), and the Triarch Praetorians, the Necrons were still largely in stasis during this time.

I feel like a handful that woke up early would have been around during the HH. Trazyn for example had that boatload of emperors children gene seed that was stolen pre heresy

Trayzn stole IIIrd legion geneseed?

 agurus1 wrote:
Trayzn stole IIIrd legion geneseed?

I think someone else stole it and Trazyn collected it from them ha

I think there could be only a way to justify the presence of the Necrons during the Horus Heresy: the Silent King prepared a plan to activate periodically a small group of Necrons, in order to find out if it was the right time to wake up the entire Necron race and the scouts activated during the Horus Heresy reported it was wise stay in stasis for some other millennium.

The way to justify Necrons is to not call them Necrons. Call them Xenos Automations, or the Horrors of Plegas 4, or the Bratstein's Monsters. The Great Crusade was loaded to the brim with xenos empires, DAoT mistakes, failed attempts to control psykers, and endless "alternatively cultured" human societies. The Necrons could be passed off as any one of them.

Ferrus Mannus slew a C'tan, who's necrodermis gave him his metallic arms. That's at least a connection that could explored more. Maybe the Iron Hands went looking for answers or perhaps the Necrons came after them looking for their own answers.

The Necrons were mostly in stasis during the heresy. Trazyn the Infinite and Illuminor Sezeres were both knocking about and were waking up limited numbers of Necrons to serve their ends (both seemed reluctant to wake too many as they would be held to account for this when the Dynasties finally awoke - but enough for a 40K army). The Triarch Praetorians and some aspects of central authority were also awake. I'm listening to Infinite and the Divine in audio book format at the moment which covers this if your friend is interested.

In terms of fluff it would be fairly easy to theme something around Trazyn collecting stuff for his museum - he has a Horus Heresy gallery with original pieces so he was definitely collecting live specimens from active warzones.

Whilst the Dynasties were almost entirely in stasis the fact that some Necrons were awake and up to stuff proves, at least in theory, that it is possible. You could theoretically have a tomb world or individual tomb that wakes up early due to a malfunction (they would likely be pretty insane and corrupted as a result. Necrons are not morning people). There isn't a record of them in the Imperial archives but there was a lot of stuff going on and the significance of some random xenos might well have been missed in all the Chaos.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Ferrus Mannus slew a C'tan, who's necrodermis gave him his metallic arms. That's at least a connection that could explored more. Maybe the Iron Hands went looking for answers or perhaps the Necrons came after them looking for their own answers.

Was it ever confirmed t hat it was a C'tan? I thought it was just a "Silver Wyrm" with living metal, which could be a dozen things.

Fluff wise they were awake, just not in huge numbers.
Game wise, what rules?

Could always run it as militia or auxilia to keep it smooth or hell, even daemons would work due to the customisation options.

I mean, most likely they'd be facing off against the defences of the tombworld. The Canoptech stuff has been active right? Keeping things maintained, warding off tresspassers. Maybe rejig the army, move a few things to other slots, like spyder HQ, scarab FA. Take the 7th ed statlines and shuffle some rules around and you may have the basics of it. As long as you don't mind homebrewing it and maybe have some of the FW units to represent some endgame type threats.

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
I think there could be only a way to justify the presence of the Necrons during the Horus Heresy: the Silent King prepared a plan to activate periodically a small group of Necrons, in order to find out if it was the right time to wake up the entire Necron race and the scouts activated during the Horus Heresy reported it was wise stay in stasis for some other millennium.

That's a really good idea I think. It does make sense.


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Jackal90 wrote:
Fluff wise they were awake, just not in huge numbers.
Game wise, what rules?

Could always run it as militia or auxilia to keep it smooth or hell, even daemons would work due to the customisation options.

Well, since HH is basically 7th edition... Use the 7th edition Necron rules

Yeah our plan was using 7th Ed necrons and homebrewing some of the new stuff into the list.

I believe there is a fan made 30k Necron Dex.

I know there's an Ork one. And the guy who did it is doing other Xenos too. I'll see if I can hunt it out.

Easy! Just have them come from a world that woke up early. They've been asleep for millions of years. Being off by a few K should be nothing. You could even provide a reason why they had awoken, too. Maybe some astronomical cataclysm happened nearby and started the waking protocalls. Maybe the tombs were disturbed in a way to rouse them. Anything really.

There's always the old fall-back of the warp did it. Some warp storm hit in the 41st millennium and deposited everything it contacted back in time to 10,000 years earlier.

Also, don't the Necrons have some sort of time-travel shenanigans in the fluff?

Or, as mentioned above, they woke up early.

Here you go, fan made 30k Xenos rules. I use the Ork ones and they are pretty solid, combine them with the Mournival events HH rules and you are golden.

https://aus30k.com/30kwiki/index.php?title=AUS30K_Documents&fbclid=IwAR1_wsOq1Y7JIxQK7xjje43flFAmPk8hz70EGTUch-BA4tEsqQk7uhVAYxA

jareddm wrote:
The way to justify Necrons is to not call them Necrons.

Chaos Androids!

The possibility of malfunction and/or insanity can conveniently explain almost anything. Other than that, I think Necrons would wake up if people started digging a bit too much into their tomb, at the very least to get rid of the intruders. They might go back to sleep afterwards.

 Tiennos wrote:
The possibility of malfunction and/or insanity can conveniently explain almost anything. Other than that, I think Necrons would wake up if people started digging a bit too much into their tomb, at the very least to get rid of the intruders. They might go back to sleep afterwards.

Yeah wasn’t this the original premise for necrons, sort of a sci if version of The Mummy

Fictional wrote:

jareddm wrote:
The way to justify Necrons is to not call them Necrons.

Chaos Androids!

Yep. Completely unironically any Necrons around might end up described as "warp-using robots," especially if it's only some small outpost tomb. A forgotten footnote of the Great Crusade.

You should read the Infinite and the Divine, which is a surprisingly enjoyable book and discusses the necrons prior to 40k, they're certainly up to tricks in the meantime so if you can slap some rules together then you're well on your way.

When Necrons first came out they were supposedly newly waking up and low in numbers, which is why they were "raiders". So how about being limited to the models that were around then? Which is as far as I remember; Lords, Immortals, Warriors, Destroyers and Scarabs.

jareddm wrote:
The way to justify Necrons is to not call them Necrons. Call them Xenos Automations, or the Horrors of Plegas 4, or the Bratstein's Monsters. The Great Crusade was loaded to the brim with xenos empires, DAoT mistakes, failed attempts to control psykers, and endless "alternatively cultured" human societies. The Necrons could be passed off as any one of them.

Definitely think this is the easiest way! One of the great shames of modern 40k is that it has 'unweaved the rainbow' and how anything outside of a very narrow set of parameters (i.e. anything that is alien and insect-like must be related to Tyranids) gets disregarded. The galaxy is a massive place, even more so during the Great Crusade when the armies of the imperium were encountering all kinds of wild and wacky alien races. Think organic species that had uploaded themselves into robotic forms is probably far more straightforward and les wacky than most concepts in fact!

And most of all never, ever let the background get in the way of you playing some games. Just use a bit of imagination to come up with something outside of the regular and you will be fine.