Stormonu wrote:
Funny you should mention this. Back before the first necron codex was released (3rd ed?), I wrote this up, hoping some of it would be incorporated into what the Necrons were.

Spoiler:

The Necrons

I am sorry for the manner in which I find myself forced to deliver this report to you. However, it is vital that word of this report reaches the ear of the Emperor, for another menace from deep space once again threatens the life of humanity. This is a threat that is even more dangerous than the massive hive fleets of the Tyranid, the vast numbers of space Orks, the corruption of Chaos or the advanced alien race known as the Eldar. In many ways, it is a combination of all of them, in the worst of ways.
As you may recall brother, the last time we met was just prior to my departure on an assignment from the Emperor himself. I, and the Legionnaire Astares cult the Star Falcons, were to depart for Tiberius III to intercept the piratical eldar craftworld of the Belial'Zaan. I feel free now to discuss this mission, for the events that followed overshadowed and overwhelmed that mission.
We had departed in utter secrecy, lest the Belial'Zaan gain word of our coming. Arriving on Tiberius III ahead of the attack of the Belial'Zaan, we arrived at the capital city of Corsuva, where we were met by the planetary governor, Baron Lazerus Huule. Huule was no fool, and had been training his own troops when word of the Belial'Zaan being in his sector had reached his ears. The Belial'Zaan were notorious murderers, arsonists and pirates, and we were sure they would soon arrive at Tiberius III.
Commander Rolf of the Star Falcons helped us set the trap for the Belial'Zaan. We felt sure that the Belial'Zaan would make a strike at the weakest, least defended city within some fifty kilometers of the capital. Likely, when the Tiberius forces would be mobilized to the attacked city in an attempt to stop the Belial'Zaan, they would switch their attack to the capital, using their warp portal machines to make a quick transition to the capital. There, the eldar could plunder and raze the capital to the ground - as so had they done to several worlds within the nearby sector.
Therefore, Rolf hid his forces in the capital, and Huule secreted his crack troops to the city we were sure the Belial'Zaan would strike first - a small city by the name of Telarion, some twenty-five kilometers from the capital. Huule continued to train his troops, and we were wary for signs of eldar infiltrators or scouts who might look for our hidden troops.
The Belial'Zaan attack came without warning, and it was fierce indeed. Had not Huule secreted his own troops in Telarion, the first word we would have had of the attack would have stragglers arriving some days later after the city had been razed to the ground. The Belial'Zaan silently bypassed the orbital detection and defense systems, and deployed their troops on the ground. On their part, it was a masterful stroke, though in the end, a fruitless one. At Telarion, the Belial'Zaan faced against Huule’s men, and though Huule’s men fought bravely, within the first hour, we were scrambling to ready Huule’s remaining forces in an effort to bait the trap before all of Telarion was razed. Had we not planned ahead so diligently, it would have been easy to see how a planetary force could have been tricked by the eldar’s fierceness to march wherever they threatened to stop their violent attack.
As we planned, Huule sent his forces to reinforce his elite units, knowing it would draw the Belial'Zaan to the capital. The plan went perfectly. When Huule’s armored forces neared the burning city of Telarion, the Belial'Zaan used their warp devices to transport themselves to the “underdefended” capital. To the Belial'Zaan’s surprise, Rolf’s forces were lying in wait.
For several hours, battle raged in the cities and buildings of the capital city, Corsuva. Finally, however, the losses the Belial'Zaan suffered were too great, and they retreated back to the craftworld they had come from. By this time, our planetary sensors had located the craftworld, and Rolf prepared to rally Huule’s starfighters as well as our Goth cruiser to track down and destroy the Belial'Zaan for once and for all.
Yet, before the Goth was ready to launch, and before the Belial'Zaan could escape, another ship appeared out of the warp, in low orbit. As we all know brother, this is a move no sane living being would attempt, for fear of miscalculation and destruction of the craft and all aboard. This was to be our first glimpse of the technological prowess of our new enemy.
At first, we thought the ship to be some sort of support for the Belial'Zaan’s craftworld, for the new ship possessed many of the slight curves and pleasing angles of the eldar ships and vehicles. Yet, as soon as the behemoth new ship appeared in low orbit, it unleashed a battery of weapons with massive firepower at the Belial'Zaan craftworld, annihilating it within seconds. What we had likely would have fought weeks, if not months to accomplish, had been finished within nine seconds of the new ship’s arrival. We feared we were to be next, as the defensive planetary array seemed to go off-line.

…

I remember the capital building falling in flames, and the screaming voice of Huule as he and his men rallied to defend our escape even as the flames tore the building around us. The fight was hopeless - shining, skeletal warriors armed with weapons too massive for their own frame marched through the halls, their purplish lasers cutting through scores of troops as they relentlessly marched forth, our weapon fire merely bouncing harmlessly off their metallic carapace.
In the confusion, I found myself accompanied by governor Huule himself. His forehead was wrapped in bleeding gauze, but he was a coherent as he was strong. In one hand he held his laspistol, and in the other, he dragged the shattered frame of one of our metallic enemies. Later I was to find out that Huule had disabled the foe by shoving a crak grenade into the creature’s metal frame after attempting to engage it in hand-to-hand combat. Huule had dived under cover as the creature frantically attempted to dislodge the grenade, and the majority of the blast had been absorbed the enemy’s metal frame and the steel barrels Huule had hidden behind. Luckily for him, a medic had found him just after the grenade had exploded, binding the governor’s wounds. Knowing that the only way to find a method to defeat these creatures lie in examining one of their corpses, Huule had grasped the shell of the metal warrior, and been attempting to haul it and his surviving men out of the building.
With my aid, the two of us made it to the underground sewers below the capital building, along with a few of Huule’s remaining household forces. The weapons we carried all seemed ineffective against this new enemy, and with much fear and trepidation, we made our way through the sewers to a place we hoped safe from enemy attack.

…

Huule led us to a remote part of the city, where we emerged beside the Historium Arcadium. The massive building, a remnant of the ancient Age of Science, lay in a large park isolated from the main city. It seemed untouched by the fighting that scoured and burned the city. The cermasteel walls glinted with the crimson light reflected from the burning city, a colored blaze that also lit the twilight sky a bloody crimson color.
Within the halls of the Historium, Huule’s troops set up camp, as Huule and I set aside a room to examine the fallen enemy we had dragged here. I must admit, we were quite amazed. Opening the metal shell, we found that the being was entirely mechanical, with a small warp core as it’s primary power source. Since Huule’s grenade had disabled it, the machine had been attempting to somehow repair itself and restore its own power. In fact, as we watched, we observed wires weld themselves back together, snap off and reconnect to other wires as the machine fought to restore power. Luckily, the warp generator had been so badly damaged by the explosion that there was no hope of the machine regaining functionality any time soon. However, to be safe, we entirely disassembled the robot.
That was when we made the first alarming discovery. On one of the framework “bones” for the machine’s arm, Huule was horrified to find a legible factory marking printed in Gothic - indicating that it had been constructed in a factory devised by humans. The stamp named the planet and factory of its origin - Regulus XXXIII. Stunned by the discovery, we turned to the records within the Historium in an attempt to locate Regulus XXXIII.
Unfortunately, though we were able to find records in the library referencing Regulus as a factory world dating back to the Age of Science, we could find no star-charts or planetary maps to the system. Apparently, as part of the purges during the end of the Age of Strife, such records had been deleted.
As we all know from ancient records brother, the Age of Science was a time of marvels and unparalleled pride among mankind. Science and technology reached incredible levels of advancement during those years, eventually accumulating in the doom that would bring the Dark Age of strife - the discovery of the Warp and devices that created portals directly into the heart of the Warp.
We also know another reason that ended the Age of Science dealt with technology itself. At some time in the past, robots and other semi-sentient machinery rebelled against mankind, attempting to make it its slave. It is for that reason that the creation of self-thinking machines has been forbidden. The few robots that the Imperium still possess are survivors of that ancient age, their so-called minds collared and restricted by the Adeptus Mechanicus so that they may never attempt again to overthrown their creator, man.
Yet, as Huule and I pored over these ancient records and studied the disassembled mechanical creation, we could not but help to wonder if some of these ancient machines had survived, and begun to build a race unto themselves, obsessed with overthrowing their fleshy creators.
We were most intrigued with the “brain” of the creature we had captured. Unlike the liquid core brain employed by imperial robots, the mechanical creature’s brain appeared very similar to a rosy-colored glass egg. I was familiar with the devices of the eldar, and it reminded me very much of the spirit stones employed by that race. However, the “brain”, though made the same material as an eldar soul stone, also contained a vast array of crystalline circuitry capable of altering its pathways to link up to the circuitry contained within the mechanical body. In fact, as we examined the components of our disassembled opponent more closely, we found veins of the crystal circuitry woven throughout the shell of the creature.

…

The fight was going well for us, we thought, and the dissection of the Necron warrior had given us the knowledge of our enemy’s weakness. Still, we could sense this was fight we could not hope to win if we allowed the Necrons to bring their superior numbers against us. Wisely, Baron Huule called for us to retreat. We would find another time to strike again.
That was when we saw the mammoth tank crest the hill behind us. Before we could move, the cannon on the thing’s right “arm” opened fire, releasing a barrage of pulsing violet light amidst our men, cleaving them in two. Keeping low, Baron Huule and I managed to slip into a narrow gorge nearby. Unfortunately we were the only to make it, as we heard the last of the screams behind us die down as the crackle of fire from the gleaming tank ceased.
We could stay where we were for long, and we attempted to creep out of the valley back to the library. Our hearts were heavy with the loss of our friends, but we knew we must continue on - find other survivors and rally against these machines of death. As we neared the library though, that was when heard the mechanical keening of the Necron’s hounds. In short order, we found ourselves captives, and to our surprise, the Necrons took us alive.

…

Huule and I were brought, bound but not gagged, into the central chamber of the mechanical hive. Energy visibly flowed through the crystalline circuitry protruding through the walls, looking as if a huge waterfall of icy water were flowing up the walls. In places where bare metal shown through the circuitry, it was most unlike the angular metal walls of the Imperium. Instead, the smooth, chrome-gleaming metal was smooth and segmented like the slick body of some worm or armored reptile. As we were brought in by our enemy, we were forced to kneel before a vast throne of chromium metal, where sat an enormous six-legged machine, who looked down at us with cold, calculating eyes that gleamed a blue that matched the open sky.
To my horror, beside the throne of the mechanical ones was a small table or platform, made of the same chromatic metal as the rest of the room. On the top of the table, encased in some sort of force field, was the decapitated head of the one of the eldar Belial'Zaan. My guess was that it was no less than the leader of the Belial'Zaan forces, though I could not be sure. Veins of crystalline circuitry protruded from the stump of the eldar’s neck, tracing down to the platform and into the floor below. The eldar’s head slowly spun in the sphere of force, the mouth slowly opening and closing in a manner of a fish gaping within its own environment. My first thought was that they had somehow maintained life within the eldar’s brain and were extracting information to use against the eldar and other living beings. I was to find out later that this was not the case; the creatures had no interest in the thoughts and information within the eldar’s brain. It was the design, the structure of the body that had their interest and they were attempting to find a way to infuse their crystalline circuitry into flesh to control it, in the manner of a puppet. For some reason, flesh seemed to resist the Necrons attempt to control it, either failing completely or driving the puppet to an insane and self-destructive mode.

….

We learned a lot from the Primus about these beings that referred to themselves as the Necron. The Necron’s homeworld is known to them as Mechanus, which we suspected to be Regulus XXXIII. Apparently, in the distant past, Mechanus was a factory-world during the Age of Science, and when the age of strife occurred, the world was abandoned to the machines. The machines continued on in a programmed pace, not yet infused with anything remotely similar to sentience. Even the most advanced machines would only match our robots, being only able to function within specified parameters. This continued until somehow an eldar Wraithlord or Wraithguard came to the planet in a damaged state. Neither Huule nor I was able to determine which, for the Necron hold the ancient event with the same reverence one would associate with the creation of a being by a god. We were able to determine, however, by the description of this advanced being that it was eldar in design. Somehow, the eldar device interacted with the machinery there, and the machinery of Mechanus attempted to repair the damaged device. Unfortunately, the machinery of Mechanus had no understanding of the advanced eldar mechanics, and the eldar device “passed away”. The machines of Mechanus, unable to comprehend the idea of death, merely continued to research the mechanics of the eldar device hoping to fix it.
Primary to the advancement of sentience in the machines of Mechanus was the spirit stone of the eldar device. Though the machines could not understand the relevance of the spirit within the stone, they worked to duplicate the device and a means to allow the device to communicate with the machine it was placed within. This developed the Necron’s brain matrix, the unusual egg-shaped crystalline structure we had found while dissecting the first Necron we had captured. The Necron brain matrix can develop ties to both the crystal circuitry of the eldar, and the electrical circuitry of our own imperial devices.
Once the Necron had reached sentience, they begin to gain a curiosity about the environment beyond their own world. Developing ships to explore, they intended to seek out the home of the eldar device they had first encountered from where they had learned sentience.
Apparently, the Necron’s first alien encounter was with the descendants of its own creator. The Necrons apparently encountered an imperial settlement, and at first thought they had found some type of kin for the devices and vehicles they noted. The imperial settlement must have reacted with fear and rightful fear of sentient machines, and attacked the Necrons.
The Necrons had never encountered battle before, but apparently the world they hailed from had several weapons factories at it. The imperial settlement was razed, and the Necron decided that the beings of flesh were both inferior and parasitical in nature. The Necron returned to their homeworld, and began the process to exterminate flesh from the universe. It is ironic that the Necron have no idea they are attempting to wipe out the very races that created them…

…
We learned from the Necron Primus that the Necrons had already encountered the Tyranids on several of their “colony” worlds. It appears the Tyranids had initially ignored the Necrons, as the hive minds of the Tyranids saw no benefit in attempting to swallow the Necrons worlds. Exactly what changed the Tyranid’s mind I’m not sure, but the Tyranid struck at the Necron colonies in a battle that threatened to consume the mechanized worlds.
The encounter with the Tyranids was a classic confrontation of opposites. In the end, the Tyranid fleet turned back rather than remain to directly resist the Necron, seeing no benefit to attempting to consume a race unusable for their own purposes. The Necrons saw no reason to pursue, feeling that their limited resources would become tied up for too long eliminating the Tyranid threat. Though the Tyranids vastly outnumbered the Necron, the advanced technology and undying nature of the Necron evened the odds immensely. To destroy a Necron, a Tyranid would have to utterly destroy the Necron, whereas the Necron merely had to be able to wade through hordes of creatures to be triumphant.
This would seem to bring the Necron in direct opposition to the Tyranids. Where the Tyranids use flesh to evolve into deadlier and more efficient creatures, the Necron are creatures of metal that oppose flesh in all its forms. The Necrons approach a creature of flesh the same as we might a cockroach, or at best, a suit of armor or clothes. Where the Necrons are able to utilize flesh, it is for little more than infiltration or as puppeteers of living creatures.

….
Even the Necrons have faced the forces of Chaos, though they have been victorious so far. At the same time, their victory has brought them the greatest blight to their “race” - the Hellbound. After the Necron’s first success over the forces of Chaos, one of the clans devoted themselves to studying, understanding and mastering the Warp. Delving back to the technology so long abandoned, the clan developed the technology to travel to the warp. The clan, prepped and ready in their massive fleet, decended into the Warp, determined not to return until they were its masters.
A few centuries later however, the clan returned as the Hellbound. They had been driven insane by their experience in the warp. The Hellbound commited atrocities that will sicken Necron and Imperial alike - for they have learned to mix flesh and metal in one being. To the Necron, they had decended to the abomination of the flesh, and rather than accept them, the Necrons fought against them. The Hellbound now wander the galaxy, seeking prey of machinery and flesh wherever they can find it, hiding within the Warp and emerging only to strike at their prey.
….

The Necron are not as unified as I had first thought. Apparently, the various factories of Mechanus has brought rise to several different “clans” of Necrons, some of whom have fought each other either on their own homeworld or abroad. Apparently, like all sentient creatures, the Necron have pride in their own form, and are willing to battle against each other to prove their form and appearance are superior to others. From speaking with the Chromium Primus, I have discovered the following the existence of the following Necron “Clans”.

Chromium: The chromium Necron are metallic in coloring, and perhaps those with the smoothest, almost eldarian forms. They favor laser and plasma weaponry, and their chromium skeletons give them some protection from enemy laser weapons. The chromiums believe themselves to be the most “scientific” and therefore most intelligent of the Necron clans.

Polymer: Unlike the other Necron clans, the polymer Necrons are made entirely of white ceramic plastic. This makes them rather fragile, but they are the most numerous of the Necron clans, capable of sporting almost five times as many troops as the rest of the Necron clans. Most of the other Necrons despise the Polymer Necrons as weak and shortsighted for being willing to waste mass numbers of their own troops to complete an objective.

Obsidian: the obsidian Necron are covered in a black ablative plastic shell that makes them difficult to detect by non-visual sensors. The obsidian prefer night and stealth fighting and use primarily ballistic weaponry. They have the smallest vehicles, which are more difficult to detect. The most feared of the obsidian Necron are the sniper assassin units, who are armed with haywire shock guns.

Steel: The steel Necron are war machines through and through. They pack the heaviest armament of all the Necron, and are known to use huge killing machines to wipe through enemy forces. The steel Necron are brutal and merciless, and even the other Necron clans fear them.

Titanium: The titanium Necron are some of the toughest, though plodding, Necron clans. The titanium employ heavy weapons typically heavier than most Necron clans, and have the greatest armor of all the Necron clans. Unfortunately, the extra weight of heavy weaponry and armor makes them slow and plodding on the battlefield, though their advance can rarely be stopped.

Electric: The electric Necron are multi-hued forms of solid crystal circuitry. The sight of one is rather amazing; they have a translucent quality to them, seeming to shine with an inner light of blue of brilliant white. In an attempt to produce the fastest processing speeds and therefore the fastest reflexes of the Necron, this clan has replaced the plassteel skeletons and carapace with pure crystal. Though this makes them slightly more fragile and unable to carry some of the heavier weapons, there is no being alive that can match their speed.


Some of the weapons we observed the Necrons carrying or heard that the other clans employed are listed below:

Las Rifle: This long-barreled rifle (an assault weapon) is a smaller version of the Las cannon employed by many of our own vehicles. This seems to be the standard weapon of the Chromium Necrons, and can destroy armored vehicles as well as other Necron. It is a weapon of overkill against infantry troops.

Gauss Rifle: This rifle tends to be the primary weapon of most of the other Necron clans. It is a long-barreled assault weapon with immense penetration strength - capable of killing multiple foes if they are foolish enough to line up in the Necron’s sights, as well as being capable of penetrating vehicle armor.

Chain Gun: Similar to our own chain guns, the powerful Necrons are capable of carrying a weapon only our terminators would have the strength to wield. The Necron chain gun uses hardened depleted uranium shells to cut through enemy ranks. The weapon is less effective against armored vehicles, though light vehicles, such as our rhinos, can fall prey to this weapon of mass destruction.

Scatter Laser Rifle: This heavy weapon is somewhat more rarer among the Chromium Necrons. It appears to be based on eldar technology. It fires 1-3 rapid beams of laser light that is designed to rip through flesh-based infantry. The Chromiums do not normally field the weapon against other chromiums or vehicles due to its weak penetration value.

Plasma Cannon: This heavy weapon fires beams of plasma energy designed to annihilate whatever it touches. It is used by the Steel and Titanium clans in their infantry, and by the other clans in their heaviest vehicles.

Haywire Shock Rifle: This weapon is a sniper rifle used mostly by the Obsidian Necrons. The weapons fires a concentrated EMP burst at the foe, which is usually a Necron, though some Obsidian sharpshooters have used it effectively against vehicles.

Fission Gun: This heavy weapon is one of the most deadly in the Necron arsenal. It is a heavy version of the gauss rifle, being in essence a mass particle accelerator. The fission gun will annihilate flesh-and-bone troops, for its primary use is against vehicles. We have seen a single shot from the fission gun rip through several lightly armed vehicles with a single shot, leaving melon-sized holes where the gun struck. The Necrons have an even heavier version of this gun that is wielded by the Mammoth - this is a weapon no vehicle can seem to stand against.

Storm Gun: The Storm gun delivers a jolt of energy to the victim that disrupts the victim’s nervous system and temporarily “shorts out” the psychic ability of the victim. It will momentarily stun non-psychic beings, but has little other effect on such beings. It does have the ability however, to break the link of individual Tyranids to the hive mind synapse.


Some of the units we observed or were informed about are included below:

Circuit: tiny, insect-like creatures the size of a man’s fist, circuits are the lowest order of the Necron forces. They often act as scouts and have little in the way of redundant circuitry, making them susceptible to enemy fire. However, this also makes them useless for other Necrons to capture. Circuits are weakly armed and armored, and are expected to scout for enemies instead of fight. Circuits have the ability to attach to enemy vehicles and armor, where they emit a homing beacon the Necron can use to improve their chances to hit. If a circuit can infiltrate into the inner workings of a machine, it can turn it into the slave of the Necrons.

Scarab: these beetle-like drones wander about with the Necron forces, repairing damaged Necron units and dismantling enemy vehicles. Scarabs utilize a welding laser as their main weapon of choice, but they are poor warriors against the living, often such foes, as if unaware of their existence.

White Widows: These gleaming metal, spider-like constructs have the specialized duty to capture living beings for transformation into conduits. The White Widows have two main weapons they use to capture prey. The first is to use a stream of web-like strands to immobilize a foe. The strands have a relatively short range, and are ineffective against vehicles of any sort. The second method of attack is with a poisoned bite. The White Widow is armed with a variety of poisons, both of a general nature and effective against a single race, making them very dangerous to a lightly armored foe in hand to hand combat. White Widows who effectively capture a target can use their rear abdomen to carry 1 - 3 human-sized opponents. This both protects the captured being as well as preventing the enemy for easily being rescued.

Conduit: These hapless beings were once creatures of flesh that the Necrons have overpowered with crystal circuitry. Now little more than puppets, their bodies are used to hunt down former friends and other associates and kill them. Conduits will be armed and armored as whatever unit they formerly consisted of, though they lose any special abilities and are a bit slower than normal on the field. There is a chance that conduits may go berserk into a suicidal frenzy due the incomplete control the Necrons have over flesh-and-blood victims.

Robots: The robots of the Necron are much more advanced than our Imperial versions, though they are, in effect, a slave race to the Necron. We have noted four main types of robots, each with specialized duties. The first is the Mantis, a two-legged robot styled after the preying mantis of Terra that is used primarily as a warehouse robot, with it’s hooked limbs moving and placing cargo. In combat, the mantis can use the arms like deadly scythes against troops, and is sometimes armed with heavy lasers on its hunched body to turn it into a vehicle-destroying assailant. The second robot the Necron use is the Centurion, a human-like robot used to effect field repairs and peform other mechanical work. It is sometimes armed on the battlefield with bolter cannons to keep enemy troops at bay while it works. The third is the scorpion, a four-legged robot with a pair of forklift-like blade arms used for transporting heavy cargo. In combat, the scorpion is often armed with a weapon astride its back and uses it’s two blade-like arms as deadly weapons for killing troops and cutting open vehicles. The last robot is known as the Mote, a round globe of a robot that floats about on a cushion of air. The Mote has a variety of mechanical arms it can extend to perform multiple tasks. In combat, any number of the arms can be utilized as deadly weapons, though it’s range is rather limited.

Scout: A lighter version of the Necron, often built with hardened plastics in place of most of the metallic components. Scouts are much quicker on the move than Necron warriors, and have a degree of stealth for ambushing opponents. Scouts generally carry lighter arms than full-fledged warriors, and are not as well armored. The Steel and Titanium clans rarely employ scouts. It is believed that the Polymer clans may have evolved from scouts.

Necron: The basic Necron warrior is a skeletal frame made of a plastic and steel hybrid. This makes the Necron both light and strong, capable of withstanding a great deal of punishment and lifting the massive weapons their race normally carries.

Stormgunner: These necron warriors are sheathed in stealthy black ceramic plate armor and wield huge guns known as Storm guns. They are specialized warriors who are designed to take on and destroy psychic opponents. The unusual armor of the Stormgunner makes it immune to most pyschic attacks, and the gun they carry can “short out” the psychic abilities of psyckers.

Cyborg: Also known as infiltrators, these are Necron warriors who have had a layer of flesh placed over their metal exoskeleton in order to infiltrate flesh-based communities. However, there is an alien quality to the Cyborg due to the limited understanding the Necron have of living things. Anyone spending more than a casual amount of time in the presence of a Cyborg can detect its true nature quite easily.

Hound: Similar in appearance to an earthling dog, hounds are skeletal yet sleek canine-shaped rangers and trackers. These units are fleet of foot and dangerous in close combat. They are often outfitted with weak laser-based ranged weapons or a limited number of micro-missiles. Their primary use is to track down hidden or fleeing units for targeting by the larger and more powerful forces.

Knight: Similar to our dreadnoughts, Necron knights are huge walking machines bristling with weapons including a plasma cannon, missile launcher and/or chain gun and twin flamers. Their arms end in either massive fists or long, slender chain swords. In many of the holo-vids we saw, it was not unusual for the knights to engage each other on the battlefield in the manner of knights of the old days of terra.

Necron Lord: Appointed by the Primus, the Necron Lord is the equivalent of one of our terran generals. They have been given vast power to control their troops, and are themselves machines that have survived for many ages. Necron Lords are some of the toughest of the warriors to destroy, for they are capable of transferring their essence to any of their lesser beings to continue fighting on. They also are armed and armored with the best gear available to their clan.
Unfortunately, the Necron Lords, with all of their authority and ability for self-determination, often bicker with one another, causing in-clan feuds to erupt. In some clans such as Steel and the Chromium, the Primus encourages such behavior, believing it strengthens the surviving units.

Primus: The Primus is the primary leader of a given clan. Each of these machines is unique in nature, with a host of supernatural powers. The Primus of the chromiums is a massive creature that walks about on six spider-like legs. Its main body extends from the center of this mass, consisting of a human-like torso with a transparent skull. The crystal circuitry brain within the transparent skull can be easily seen. Though the chromium Primus rarely enters battle, in combat one of its arms employs a chain gun while the other bears a hand wielding a power sword. In close combat, it uses its various spider-like legs to spear and slay opponents.

Some of the vehicles we saw the Necron employ are listed below:

Carapace: smallest of the vehicles, these beetle-like machines are used to transport Necrons into battle in the same manner that we use bikes and the eldar use jetbikes. Carapaces come in two types - the lightly armored hornet, which are capable of flying over low terrain, similar in effect to a jetbike. The hornet is armed with twin-linked laser guns. The heavier armored scarabs scuttle along the ground, carrying a single Necron warrior on their back. Scarabs are capable of producing an obscuring cloud of gray vapor and metallic bits that hides the advance of other Necron troops. Scarabs are armed with twin-barreled equivalent of storm bolters. In some cases, they have been rearmed with a rear-firing missile launcher.

Skim pad: Used primarily by the Necron warriors of groups of 1 - 3, skim pads are circular disks controlled by crystal circuitry extended by the Necron into the pad. The pad enhances the Necron’s senses, giving a greater range at which it can detect other units, while also enhancing movement. Lastly, the pad incorporates several built-in weapons to enhance the Necron’s own firepower.

Octopi: These skull-faced floaters skim over the battlefield, collecting intelligence for the Necron forces. Their arrays of sensors can help the Necron find hidden or concealed troops, and their other various “tentacles” contain a battery of weapons to allow them to attack nearby troops. If pressed, the Octopi can latch onto a vehicle and shred it with its cutting lasers and immensely strong tentacles.

Hunter Tank: This tracked vehicle is an offensive nightmare. A twin armed “turret” extends above the main body of the tank, with one “arm” consisting of a plasma cannon, and the other “arm” containing one of a variety of heavy weapons, such as a scatter laser/missile launcher combo. The main body of the tank is capable of transporting 10 Necron warriors into battle. The chromium version is plated with the same hull as the Necron warriors, giving it resistance to laser weaponry. It is assumed the hull of the other clans vary similarly.

Wasp Hovertank: This flying vehicle vaguely resembles a wasp with wings spread wide and the “stinging” tail arcing down to rain death on forces below. The Wasp is lightly armored, very fast, and mounts a heavy scatter laser in the tail “stinger” designed to destroy enemy troops. Wasps are also armed with twin missile launchers, one in each wing. They can carry up to 10 Necron warriors or a load of bombs. The bombs are usually inferno-based.

Death Spider: the Obsidian, Crystal and Chromium Necrons primarily use this eight-legged walker. It is fairly maneuverable and quick, though lightly armed and armored. Each leg mounts the equivalent of a laser rifle, and a heavy weapon, either a laser cannon or twin-linked chain gun is affixed to the front. The Death spider can hold 20 Necron warriors in the bloated thorax of the machine.

Millipede: This multi-legged walker consists of a series of transports that can be linked together in an almost endless stream. The “head” of the millipede is a four-legged monstrosity that is armed with twin laser cannons and a missile launcher, and holds the command crew for the craft, consisting of three specially trained Necrons. Each segment of the millipede has four legs and is defended by the equivalent of a laser rifle mounted in each of the side arcs. A segment can hold 10 Necron troops.

Mammoth: This four-legged machine of death vaguely resembles a skull-faced elephant of terra. It is armed with twin laser cannons mounted like tusks on the skullish face, and sports heavy weapon sponsoons on its side. A wide variety of side weapons are used, ranging from Gauss cannons to plasma cannons and Melta-guns. Last of all, the Mammoth sports a deadly turret on its back, sporting a fusion cannon.

Necrons and Psychic powers

Though the Necron seem unable to manifest psychic abilities, they appear to have learned a trick or two about them having faced other races capable of using the abilities. First of all, Necrons are immune to any psychic attack that strikes at a sentient mind. This appears to be due to the mechanical nature of their brains.
Necrons have developed several weapons and pieces of equipment to deal with psychers. The first device is the psi-helmet. This mechanical device is first attached to a psychic creature, where it reads the being’s brainwaves. This has the effect of “teaching” the helmet how to use certain psychic powers. Because of the time it takes to program the helmet, such an item is always prepared and worn before a combat begins. However, the imperfect understanding of the Necrons makes the use of the psi-helmet unreliable, and somewhat dangerous to the Necron. It does allow them, however, to steal and pit enemy psychic abilities against their opponents. The second item used by the Necron is the psi-dampener helmet. This device has the opposite effect of the psi-helmet. When placed on a foe, it disrupts the psychic’s ability to call on the warp, negating their ability to use psychic abilities. Usually psi-dampener helmets are preprogrammed to affect a specific foe before combat, and are applied to an opponent in hand-to-hand combat.
The primary weapon Necrons use to deal with psychers is called the Storm gun. Wielded by specially trained and protected Necron warriors, the Storm gun delivers a jolt of energy to the victim that disrupts the victim’s nervous system and temporarily “shorts out” the psychic ability of the victim. It will momentarily stun non-psychic beings, but has little other effect on such beings. It does have the ability however, to break the link of individual Tyranids to the hive mind synapse.
The final item used by the Necron is the Warp Storm generator. This large generator creates disharmonic pulses in the warp, creating a circular area that is dead to psychic manipulation. The Warp Storm generator can only be mounted on heavy vehicles that can normally hold troops or other gear, and the massive size of the generator precludes the vehicle’s ability to use the space for anything else.

Necron and Chaos

Though the Necron have the ability to pass through the Warp with amazing ability, their absence of psychic ability makes them all but meaningless to the creatures of that alternate reality. However, one clan of Necron, the Hellbound, have fallen prey to the madness of the warp.
The Hellbound are an abomination to the Necron, for they freely mix flesh with their own metal components to create new and terrifying monstrosities. Each of the primary Necron units also has a Hellbound parallel, mixed with components of flesh and steel.
Necrons do not deal with other chaos forces, and are inable or unwilling to gain the attention of daemons of the warp. This does not mean however, that the Hellbound do not have their own monstrosities. Listed below are a few unique creations of the Hellbound.

Hellbound Conduits: Made of glittering crystal and bleeding flesh, these drones have the ability to not only invade vehicles, but to overpower and convert living beings as well. Hellbound Conduits do not have the ability to allow other units to use them to target an opponent, but the do have a one-shot ability to poison an opponent, killing them in a manner akin to a virus grenade.

Hellhounds: Similar in appearance to Necron hounds, the hellhound is made of bleeding flesh and steel musculature. Hellhounds are used to track opponents like regular hounds, but they are fierce close combat fighters and those unfortunate enough to face them in hand-to-hand combat can be infected with a flesh-eating virus.

Cannibals: Once creatures of flesh, the cannibal has had it’s interal organs replaced with steel, and been given an Infinity Matrix mind. The cannibal looks like a gruesome Frankenstein’s monster of flesh and steel, with a wide variety of built-in and hand held weapons. If rendered inoperable, the cannibal’s necronian interior can break out of the shell to continue the attack. Many opponents have fallen in this way, thinking they have slain the cannibal prematurely.

Sightless: Much like cannibals, the sightless consist of a stitched, fleshy covering over a skeleton of steel. The most noticable feature about the sightless though is that their eyes have been visibly gouged out. They have retained their human brain, though they are darkly mad, to allow them to use psychic abilities. Luckily, a well-aimed shot to the head is enough to put the sightless out of commision.

Dragonfly: This horrid parasite looks like a steel dragonfly with gossamer wings of flesh and a thorax made of wound, pulpy nerve bundles. The dragonfly attempts to attack flesh-and-blood opponents from behind, where it attaches to the victim’s spinal cord and takes control of the host body. Removal of the dragonfly has proved fatal in all attempts so far.

Pirhana: So named because it eats the flesh off it’s victims, the Pirhana is a huge engine of destruction that roams the battlefield seeking victims to flay the flesh from their bones. The Pirhana has a ranged attack with a barbed line of wire that it uses to catch victims and draw into the “organ grinder”. The “organ grinder” is a mouth-like opening in the pirhana’s front that contains a host of gears and other cutting implements designed to remove the victim’s armor and remove the flesh from the victim. Given sufficient time, the Pirhana can actually produce cannibals on the battlefield, and can carry up to 10 in storage at any given time, releasing them as needed.

Steel Demon: This huge conglamoration of steel and bare muscle is both frightening and strong. Standing about 5 meters tall, it bears a deadly complement of weapons, one heavy weapon for each arm and a host of smaller weapons designed to kill lesser troops. The Steel Demon has the strength to rip most vehicles open and the ability to adjust its tracked carriage to enter spaces it normally would not fit into. Mounted in the central chest cavity of the Steel Demon is a heavy guass gun for dealing with armored vehicles.



Sources:

Virus
The Matrix
Terminator I & II
Empire Strikes Back
Saturn V
Event Horizon

 Psienesis wrote:

Spoiler:

 Psienesis wrote:
Basically? The Necrons and C'Tan are millions of years older than the Emperor. They did not ever meet.

 Darth Bob wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Basically? The Necrons and C'Tan are millions of years older than the Emperor. They did not ever meet.

Except maybe the whole "Void Dragon is the one the Emperor imprisoned under Mars" thing. May or may not have been "retconned", since the one the Emperor imprisoned could very well have been a loose C'tan shard.

 Darth Bob wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Basically? The Necrons and C'Tan are millions of years older than the Emperor. They did not ever meet.

Except maybe the whole "Void Dragon is the one the Emperor imprisoned under Mars" thing. May or may not have been "retconned", since the one the Emperor imprisoned could very well have been a loose C'tan shard.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Darth Bob wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Basically? The Necrons and C'Tan are millions of years older than the Emperor. They did not ever meet.

Except maybe the whole "Void Dragon is the one the Emperor imprisoned under Mars" thing. May or may not have been "retconned", since the one the Emperor imprisoned could very well have been a loose C'tan shard.

Even in that case, it's a shard of the Void Dragon, since the Necrons can buy Void Dragon Shards for their armies. The encounter between Emp and Dragon is millions and millions of years after the end of the War in Heaven.