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So everyone knows that the Necron race is nothing more than alien robot zombies. Able to reanimate and repair themselves on the battlefield, it's tough to keep them down, and even if you do, according to the codex "should irreparable damage occur, the Necron will simply 'phase out'- automated teleport beams returning it to the safety of the statis crypts, where it remains in storage until such time as repairs can be carried out."

So, if it can be fixed in battle, the Necron gets reanimated. If not, then it gets sent back to the tomb to await it's mechanical frame's turn in the repair shed. So then how is it that, for example in the section on Nemesor Zahndrekh & Vargard Obyron, the Vargard is able to "silence or dispose" of "upstart Lords in the Royal Court"? It says that he keeps order for his master by challenging rivals to trial by combat" or striking terror into the court with "the quiet terror of a conspirator's disappearance".

But neither of Obyron's gestures would have an effect on those attempting a hostile takeover, unless it meant that their existences were at risk. Which begs the question, how does he and any other Necron, or 'barbarian' for that matter keep a Necron perma-dead? If whatever psyche the Necron has is just stored in the master program to be reinstalled in a previously damaged body or even a new one, I can't see any way to kill them! Sure maybe a Lord could wipe a personality from the program, but if that's the arguement then only Necrons can kill other Necrons, so why would Lychguards be needed to protect the Lord on the battlefield?

GW is telling me that Necrons can always find a way back from the dead, but then GW makes them seem to fear death, so "How do you kill that which has no life?"

Moved it over to 40K Background for you.

1) Reanimation protocols aren't perfect. There is always a chance critically damaged necron would fail to teleport back, which triggers his self-destruction. For more advanced models tlike lichguards, lords and overlords this chance is varty low but it still exist.
2) The one who controll the tombworld/tombship command protocols can disable reanimation priticils for some models. This allow to assasinate some lower lords and overlords.
3) Reanimation protocols could be blocked by shifting the laws of physics - that's why Necrons so hate psykers as the few of the barbarians who could permakill them. Deamonic magic and cryptek superscience could apply to this too.

Find the resurrection ship and destroy it

 Flinty wrote:
Find the resurrection ship and destroy it

You mis them with Cylons

The memories (or perhaps the digital "soul") of a Necron has to be physically stored somewhere within its body. You need only find that particular location and destroy it.

Its all left a bti vague OP (as is GWs fluffwriting wants).
I recall reading somewhere even when blasted apart by say krak missiles, part of Cron warriors will crawl back together ala T1000 style and get battleready again.
VS weapons like melta guns and heavy plasma there realistically should be no way back whatsoever since you are merely left with atoms or liquid plasma.
More conventional damage as you have said causes a phase out back to the TombWorld or a self destruct sequence.

I always thought rules-wise animation protocols VS certain types of weapons are nonsense.

My vote would go to them just being left in Stasis, until the events of his disappearance quieten, then he is 'recycled'. a new personality etc...

think Doctor Who... but more grimdark robots

I assume the proper way to kill a Necron permanently would be incineration.. You can't bring back something that's not there any more

Simply destroy all Necron tomb worlds.

Easy*







*probably not easy at all

I assume the proper way to kill a Necron permanently would be incineration.. You can't bring back something that's not there any more

however even that is not guaranteed, in the presence of a resurrection orb completely liquefied pools Necron will actually resurrect. odds are the repairing crypts in the tomb world will have access to resurrection orb like artifact that will allow the more damaged Necrons to be repaired. the best way to kill a Necron permanently is to destroy either the tomb world or tomb ship that they'd phase out too prior to killing the actual NecroN, if they have no place to phase out to repair then they just do their self destruct protocol. If the dynasty of Necrons has another tomb world or ship in the area they can also phase out to there too so you have to be very thorough.

 Ratius wrote:
Its all left a bti vague OP (as is GWs fluffwriting wants).
I recall reading somewhere even when blasted apart by say krak missiles, part of Cron warriors will crawl back together ala T1000 style and get battleready again.
VS weapons like melta guns and heavy plasma there realistically should be no way back whatsoever since you are merely left with atoms or liquid plasma.
More conventional damage as you have said causes a phase out back to the TombWorld or a self destruct sequence.

I always thought rules-wise animation protocols VS certain types of weapons are nonsense.

Melpa plasma ant other vaporizing weaponry just melt necrodermis to the T-1000 style silver smelt. Which start to form back in to necron if the reanimation protocols trigger correctly, or would teleport away if not. In the previous editions they needed the power of Orb to reanimate from smelt (read Dead Men Walking), but 5-th changed it (read Fall of Damnos).

They with a fizzle and a pop!

 cordan123 wrote:
So everyone knows that the Necron race is nothing more than alien robot zombies. Able to reanimate and repair themselves on the battlefield, it's tough to keep them down, and even if you do, according to the codex "should irreparable damage occur, the Necron will simply 'phase out'- automated teleport beams returning it to the safety of the statis crypts, where it remains in storage until such time as repairs can be carried out."

So, if it can be fixed in battle, the Necron gets reanimated. If not, then it gets sent back to the tomb to await it's mechanical frame's turn in the repair shed. So then how is it that, for example in the section on Nemesor Zahndrekh & Vargard Obyron, the Vargard is able to "silence or dispose" of "upstart Lords in the Royal Court"? It says that he keeps order for his master by challenging rivals to trial by combat" or striking terror into the court with "the quiet terror of a conspirator's disappearance".

But neither of Obyron's gestures would have an effect on those attempting a hostile takeover, unless it meant that their existences were at risk. Which begs the question, how does he and any other Necron, or 'barbarian' for that matter keep a Necron perma-dead? If whatever psyche the Necron has is just stored in the master program to be reinstalled in a previously damaged body or even a new one, I can't see any way to kill them! Sure maybe a Lord could wipe a personality from the program, but if that's the arguement then only Necrons can kill other Necrons, so why would Lychguards be needed to protect the Lord on the battlefield?

GW is telling me that Necrons can always find a way back from the dead, but then GW makes them seem to fear death, so "How do you kill that which has no life?"

Obyron probably just deletes the personality on the master program.

And the Lychguards exist because getting your body destroyed is horribly inconvenient. Quite impolite of those children to do so.

And the Necrons do fear death, the fear of death is one of the main contributions to the Necrontyr taking up a bargain with the Space Devil.

The utter misery of the days before the Necrontyr finally removed themselves from the circle of life left a scar on their society that has never truly healed.

I mean, back then Necron cities were really more giant mausoleums with apartments built on top. The envy of the Old One's effective immortality is a major part of their Pathos.

The Phaeron of the given Tomb "boxes" them, just like they did in BSG. Basically, if the figure is one of the rare Necron models that has sentience, the Phaeron orders his Crypteks to isolate the personality engram for that individual and move it to some sort of Space SSD and removed from the Resurrection Network.

Then the Phaeron kills, or has killed, the offending individual. With no personality program found on the network, the Resurrection Protocols do not engage, and that guy stays dead... at least until he's reconnected to the network.

The Necron Codex does state that those who are unable to be repaired are rendered down into energy to be reused..........they can die

They're already dead.

/Kenshiro

 Mr Morden wrote:
The Necron Codex does state that those who are unable to be repaired are rendered down into energy to be reused..........they can die

Unfortunately as most Necrons aren't truly sapient, they can just replace the lot of them.

Besides, Immortals and Warriors were dirty, dirty commoners anyway.

Good thing there isn't anything like Phasers in 40k. Complete disintegration would stop Necrons pretty quick.

 Breotan wrote:
Good thing there isn't anything like Phasers in 40k. Complete disintegration would stop Necrons pretty quick.

Meltas, Gauss weapons, Baleflamers, psychic spells and the like.

And if the body is beyond repair, the personality is just downloaded into a new chassis.

And 40k laughs at Star Trek's puny megatons compared to it's mighty tera-petatons.

Find the off switch.

 Ratius wrote:

She looks like a man.

It's really awkward.

Iranna.

"We'z gonna krump 'em, den we'll go ta where dey get un-krumped and krump 'em real dead!"

I assume this might work.

If I recall in the 5th edition rulebook, (or was it apocalypse?) itwent into detail of the nodal command structure. Amongst all that it mentioned that even if a necron body is utterly annhilated so that it can't repair at all the mind/psyche of the Necron will be teleported back for reissue into another body.

The only real way to stop them is to destroy every single tomb world it seems.

If the Necron body is damaged enough (IE reduced to nothing by a meltagun, digested in a Carnifex's stomach, or destroyed by sorcery) then it can't be repaired. Or, if the location where it was supposed to be repaired is destroyed, then it also can't be repaired.

However, on a galactic scale, tomb worlds are still building new Necrons. If you're talking about eradicating the Necron race as a whole, either the tomb worlds would have to be destroyed, or simply run out of material, and the surviving Necrons would have to be eradicated as well.

If there's one thing Necrons do well, its endure. Assuming they're drawn into a war of attrition where they're going to expend their remaining resources, they go into hibernation. From there, their opponents are forced to search through the entire galaxy, rooting through world after world, uncovering and painfully scouring every tomb one by one.

Also depends on data transfer speed, I mean everyone's assuming dying Necron's simply upload to a local node then are sent on to a new body but even with a FTL wireless communication grid your still going to have at least nano seconds of time, lag so to speak, the more uploads at once, say a battle the Necron's are largely loosing, the more that lag increases. If you could jam a Necron's method of transfer you could isolate it and destroy the local host and leave the data nowhere to transfer to, or truly destroy it the very nanosecond it suffers any damage before it can upload.

This is all assuming that all Necron's important enough for this transfer don't have off site stored back ups. in which case Obyron may have not killed as many upstarts as he thinks.

All in all murdering an individual Necron's consciousness is like trying to kill raw data.

Shield generators. Kill a necron within a shield generator and the fields prevent it from phasing out. Happened in the book Hammer and Anvil. Big battle between Sisters of Battle and necron forces with an energy shield around them. As the necrons were destroyed and tried to phase out they would bump up against the shield and collect in piles of broken Necron bits. Of course once the shield goes down they would phase out but I am sure Necron Lords have energy bubbles they could place the remains of their enemies in that would last until the universe implodes.

Basically, they don't.

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

 Psienesis wrote:
The Phaeron of the given Tomb "boxes" them, just like they did in BSG. Basically, if the figure is one of the rare Necron models that has sentience, the Phaeron orders his Crypteks to isolate the personality engram for that individual and move it to some sort of Space SSD and removed from the Resurrection Network.

Then the Phaeron kills, or has killed, the offending individual. With no personality program found on the network, the Resurrection Protocols do not engage, and that guy stays dead... at least until he's reconnected to the network.

This is basically how I imagine it. Now, if you are not a Necron with kind of influence in a Tomb World, I think it would require a lot more.

To otherwise destroy a Necron permanently, you would need to first destroy whichever Tomb World he is going to "phase to", and then cause catastrophic damage to his body. He would have no where to phase to and probably not phase anywhere at all. Although I suppose knowing which Tomb World he is going to phase to would be pretty hard to find out, and then unless you have a Space Marine chapter its going to be next to impossible to destroy.