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Hear me out.

It's a bit of a repetition of what I've put in the headcanon thread, but I thought I'd set it all out in one go to try and work my way around it, and hopefully get some ideas.

Starting at the basics. Machines, like the Necrons, need power sources to function. What if the C'Tan only creamed the top off the pool of Necrontyr souls they'd freed, and used the majority as power sources for their new Necron servants. That would give added explanation to a couple of things that strike me as a little odd with some of the fluff and the crunch:

1. It would explain why the Eldar are so reluctant to use wraith constructs, given that they're some of their most powerful weapons. Using souls to power mechanical warriors, just like the ancient enemy you were literally created to fight and you are genetically and culturally pre-determined to hate, would understandably fill the Eldar with revulsion given how embedded their culture is with their myths.

2. It would explain why some Necron Lords are dead-set (excuse the pun) with finding new biological bodies for their race. It wouldn't make sense if it's only a handful of Lords and retainers who got new biological bodies as that's not going to be enough to have a sustainable population, and would make them very vulnerable for minimal gain. However, if the entirety of their population, everyone they knew, their friends, family etc. were trapped in living metal sarcophagi, their very life force being used as a power source. I can see how that would be motivation to find new bodies.

3. It would explain why D-Scythes work against Necrons. Technically they shouldn't, given that Necrons don't have a soul to cut loose.

4. It would also give added weight to why the Necrons use warp-nulling tech. Wouldn't want chaos gribblies chomping on their power sources now would they?

Also, if this were true, you could use it to bring back the whole 'harvest the living' thing that made the Necrons actually scary the first time round. What if they need living souls to replenish their power units? That would help out with another thing that i can't seem to suspend my disbelief for: why the Necrons ever bother fighting the 'nids. At the moment, I can't see why the Necrons don't just let the 'nids roflstomp the galaxy for them, then they can take over lordship of all the dead worlds. Et voila! Necrons have got their turf back and they didn't even need to do anything.

At least with the 'harvest the living' thing the Necrons would have a vested interest in keeping the galaxy full of life. Pretty hard to harvest a lifeless rock.

Lastly, it could mean that this is the case:


Better or worse than current Necron fluff? Could even keep the sharding of the C'Tan and the various dynasties that I think are real positives of the Newcrons.

I dont think it was ever argued they did not. Their souls were ripped from them and put into the metal bodies, or at least a fragment was, so tahts why they are all salty ass holes.

Is that actually stated in the codex? I definitely thought they were tricked and their souls were eaten by the C'Tan.

Whether Necrons still have souls has long flip-flopped between sources.

It would certainly be nothing new for Necrons to have souls.

The simplest solution to the problem is that the 'soul' isn't a simple 'bit' of sentient creatures like the heart or lungs, and while the Necrons lost part of their souls during biotransference, another part remains tied to them somehow.

(Which would give them souls as described in Dawn of War: Soulstorm - 'feeble and sour' (Dark Eldar victory at Coastal Imosa))

Ynneadwraith wrote:
1. It would explain why the Eldar are so reluctant to use wraith constructs, given that they're some of their most powerful weapons. Using souls to power mechanical warriors, just like the ancient enemy you were literally created to fight and you are genetically and culturally pre-determined to hate, would understandably fill the Eldar with revulsion given how embedded their culture is with their myths.

Just a point there's already pretty logical reason. Activating wraith construct requires utilizing soul of dead eldar. That's very much akin to necromancy. In human culture we already have habit of respecting dead and any sort of rudeness toward dead is generally not viewed good. Why would eldar not have aversion to disrupting rest of their dead ones? Especially as putting them into combat exposes those souls to eternal oblivition on case spirit stone where they rest gets broken. That thought is pretty horrible for Eldar I bet.

tneva82 wrote:

Just a point there's already pretty logical reason. Activating wraith construct requires utilizing soul of dead eldar. That's very much akin to necromancy. In human culture we already have habit of respecting dead and any sort of rudeness toward dead is generally not viewed good. Why would eldar not have aversion to disrupting rest of their dead ones? Especially as putting them into combat exposes those souls to eternal oblivition on case spirit stone where they rest gets broken. That thought is pretty horrible for Eldar I bet.

Yeah that's what I've always struggled with slightly. In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, when the Eldar race is on the very brink of destruction, they get a bit prissy about disturbing their dead. When the Eldar go to extraordinary lengths to preserve their living citizens, and the use of wraith constructs would doubtless save many, many lives, they still wait until the last second to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I do think the Eldar would be dead-set against it (oh dear, pun not intended), but the Eldar will do anything to save their race. Disturbing the dead probably ranks pretty low on the qualms I would have in that situation (although I am applying my thought process to an alien mind).

I feel that if it's using the technology/philosophy of the race they were genetically and culturally engineered to fight, the race that committed genocide against your creators and allies, this explanation has the weight behind it that it needs.

It's a logical reason. It just seems like a weak one.

I like it, adds an extra element of grimdark - the heroic Imperial Guard squad focus their fire on the inhuman death robit stomping mercilessly towards them, finally bring it down to discover it was just a child trapped in a Terminator's body...

Urrgh. So much grimdark I just shuddered.

 Skinflint Games wrote:
I like it, adds an extra element of grimdark - the heroic Imperial Guard squad focus their fire on the inhuman death robit stomping mercilessly towards them, finally bring it down to discover it was just a child trapped in a Terminator's body...

Urrgh. So much grimdark I just shuddered.

Yeah that's the bit that makes it for me. So grimdark.

I've got a little story brewing in my head that I really should get down on paper. Set immediately prior to the bio-transference in a market on a backwater Necrontyr world. There's an old grizzled veteran chap (35 years old and still healthy, good going for a Necrontyr) who's sitting under his solar shade watching some street urchins kicking rocks around in the dusty marketplace.

Suddenly, a Necrontyr flier plummets from the sky and explodes. Thinking they're under attack from the Old Ones forces, he sprints to his stall where he's hidden his gauss rifle from his service days, people all around him just dropping down limp.

He goes to comfort the little street urchin girl, saying how he's a trained warrior of the Necrontyr empire and the Old Ones can't hurt her while he's around. He gets halfway through his sentence then his eyes roll back in his skull and he slumps forwards.

The perspective switches to the little girl, peering out from under her rad-hood in horror at the scene around her, people littering the floor of the marketplace. Then, everything goes blank.

She wakes up in a room that's completely dark and cold. She tries to scream and a harsh metallic rasping noise echoes around the walls. Slowly, the darkness creeps in from the edges of her vision and she loses consciousness again.

Flash forward many millennia and a Necron warrior gets strafed by a heavy bolter, one of the rounds piercing its ribcage and detonating violently. Briefly flashing into consciousness, the 65 million-year-old scream of the little Necrontyr girl escapes its cage as that same metallic rasp before she phases out back to her resting place on the tomb-world and she fades out again.

Once you start thinking that it was probably just the upper echelons of the Necrontyr society that knew what was happening with the bio-transference, and that the majority of their citizens were probably just getting on with their lives as normal, it really puts it into perspective that what happened to the Necrontyr is probably one of the most horrible events of the 40k timeline.

I did have a version of that story where the little girl doesn't fade out of consciousness and is awake the whole time in complete isolation, becoming a Flayed One as per the old-school (again, better) fluff. That was a bit too grimdark even for me though...

Ynneadwraith wrote:
Yeah that's what I've always struggled with slightly. In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, when the Eldar race is on the very brink of destruction, they get a bit prissy about disturbing their dead. When the Eldar go to extraordinary lengths to preserve their living citizens, and the use of wraith constructs would doubtless save many, many lives, they still wait until the last second to do it.

That's risking the dead from rest to fate worse than death. You seriously don't see why they might have qualms about dooming their own members to fate worse than death?

The thing about Necrontyr non-combatants is true whether or not they have souls, though. I'm fairly certain that there is fluff (old and new) on Necrons losing their minds for a whole host of reasons, including time, mechanical failure on part of their Tomb World, and their minds simply not surviving the transfer process.

As for the Eldar, well, there's a link to the Necrons whether they specifically use souls or not - the Necrons represent the risen dead, so that cultural tie between them (the Ancient Enemy) and necromancy wouldn't go unnoticed regardless. I think it mostly has to do with Eldar respect for the(ir) dead, though. I like to think that the Eldar have great respect for the Necrontyr prior to their conversion; that they see them as victims of the worst kind of necromancy and have been transformed into something utterly repulsive and tragic.

The question is, though; what is a soul? Can you remove a soul from a being in such a manner that their mind and body remain intact, and if you do, what happens? Why does a healthy, thinking brain (a human's, for example) need a soul? Eldar souls are their entire mind, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Eldar brain is in fact some crystalline matrix designed purely to hold their soul and connect it to the nervous system.

For humans, we can look at a lot of different things. Compare a normal, healthy human to a Servitor. Both have souls, but their brains are very different - so we know that, for humans, the brain matters. Does the brain imprint upon the soul, if you made a ghost of a servitor it would still be a servitor in terms of psyche? That'd mean that the soul is a snapshot of the brain at the moment it is removed from the body.

Tau do have souls, just really tiny ones. This probably serves to protect them from the Warp in some way - I imagine Tau couldn't be twisted and possessed as easily as truly soulless matter can (drones wouldn't have this protection).

What's really interesting is the concept of a Blank. They are more than just "soulless" - a lump of metal is soulless, a Tau drone is soulless. Blanks aren't just invisible to the Warp, they're a living maelstrom of anti-Warp, their presence utter anathema to anything Warp-based (though, interestingly, their presence doesn't eradicate the souls of standard beings), causing psykers great pain or even killing them, banishing daemons, et cetera. This has to be much, much more than simply a normally soul-carrying organism without one; a Necron should ostensibly be such a being, and I think the C'tan would much rather turn every Necron into a Blank than gain a paltry benefit by using their soul-dregs to power their constructs.

That leads me to that point, actually. I'm not disagreeing with your theory, but I do disagree that the reason for it was so that their souls could power them. The Necrons/Necrontyr are extremely advanced, and power generation isn't difficult for them. Some of the fluff in that regard is stupid; there's some tidbit somewhere about the AdMech determining that a gauss flayer would require a starship reactor to power it, which is completely absurd for several reasons, but mostly because it'd make the Necrons idiots for not just using this great power on lasers, plasma, or something else more effective.

There is also the implication that every psychic species in the galaxy has been touched by, at some point in their evolution, the Old Ones. It's entirely possible that the Necrontyr were experimented on by the Old Ones, of course, but we'll assume they aren't connected for now.

Finally, we come to the question of what the C'tan intended for the Necrontyr. I think it's a lot more than simply tricking them so they could eat their souls. Even if we ignore the question of "how does a C'tan, to whom the Warp is poison, eat a soul?". For an immortal being, this is an extremely short-sighted move just for a quick (albeit apparently tasty) snack. I think the goal was to transform the Necrons into weapons against Chaos/the Warp.

From here, I have some possible conclusions. The Necrons were designed to be a C'tan-controlled slave army against Chaos/the Warp. To this end, one of two things happened: their souls were reduced to almost nothing to give these warriors protection from it (see what I said about the Tau), or the Necrontyr never had big souls at all (ie there is no change in their soul between being a Necrontyr and a Necron), and the major change between the two is their actual mind being overriden with Necron programming (see Necron master control program, etc). I think I prefer the second.

EDIT: Sorry for the really, really long post!

tneva82 wrote:


That's risking the dead from rest to fate worse than death. You seriously don't see why they might have qualms about dooming their own members to fate worse than death?

No, I definitely get that, but above all else the Eldar are ruthlessly pragmatic when it comes to the survival of their race. If they don't raise their wraith constructs, they doom them to a certain fate worse than death. Without their living guardians, the Eldar dead are at the mercy of the universe around them.

It's definitely the official explanation, but it makes the Eldar seem prissy. Prissy does not gel well with the main theme of 40k, which is the last stand of grimdark humans against innumerable, horrific and insidious aliens. Plus, my idea doesn't go against the official fluff, just adds weight behind it.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The thing about Necrontyr non-combatants is true whether or not they have souls, though...

Very true, but based on the in-universe description of what it's like to have no soul (blanks), it sort of deadens their plight slightly. They might have outwardly gone mad, but having no soul means that they cannot feel it.

However, if their souls are still in there, trapped, it makes it properly grimdark.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
As for the Eldar, well, there's a link to the Necrons whether they specifically use souls or not - the Necrons represent the risen dead, so that cultural tie between them (the Ancient Enemy) and necromancy wouldn't go unnoticed regardless. I think it mostly has to do with Eldar respect for the(ir) dead, though.

This I really like! It means that either way, there's added weight to the 'eldar being prissy about their dead' thing. I understand that the main thing is respect for their dead, but in the desperate circumstances they're in at the moment 'respect' doesn't seem to carry much weight.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I like to think that the Eldar have great respect for the Necrontyr prior to their conversion; that they see them as victims of the worst kind of necromancy and have been transformed into something utterly repulsive and tragic.

This is brilliant! Given that the timescale of Eldar pre-history is so vast, there's actually scope for a peace to have been brokered between the Eldar and the Necrontyr after they were defeated. Especially considering the fact that this was before the warp got fethed up, before some of the C'Tan were destroyed damaging the fabric of reality in ways we don't know, and the Eldar race was still young. In short, it was still Noblebright. Perhaps it was only those higher up that harboured the hatred towards the Old Ones and their creations.

It would neatly explain why they dislike necromancy so much (technically. Being completely alien minds, there's no reason why they should have the same natural revulsion towards necromancy that we do). It's not that I don't think that they would be revolted by necromancy, it's just that they're completely alien minds to us. The added depth provides an explanation as to why beings that are absolutely nothing like us apart from in appearance, think the same way we do.

Actually, that's why I have such difficulty with the Newcron fluff. Their motivations seem more human than the actual humans in the galaxy. They're supposed to be the undead remnants of an alien race who died before humans even evolved. Why should they be anything like us (within reason for the science fantasy genre, and the market they're selling to).

It's like an alien Uncanny Valley.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

That leads me to that point, actually. I'm not disagreeing with your theory, but I do disagree that the reason for it was so that their souls could power them. The Necrons/Necrontyr are extremely advanced, and power generation isn't difficult for them. Some of the fluff in that regard is stupid; there's some tidbit somewhere about the AdMech determining that a gauss flayer would require a starship reactor to power it, which is completely absurd for several reasons, but mostly because it'd make the Necrons idiots for not just using this great power on lasers, plasma, or something else more effective.

There is also the implication that every psychic species in the galaxy has been touched by, at some point in their evolution, the Old Ones. It's entirely possible that the Necrontyr were experimented on by the Old Ones, of course, but we'll assume they aren't connected for now.

Finally, we come to the question of what the C'tan intended for the Necrontyr. I think it's a lot more than simply tricking them so they could eat their souls. Even if we ignore the question of "how does a C'tan, to whom the Warp is poison, eat a soul?". For an immortal being, this is an extremely short-sighted move just for a quick (albeit apparently tasty) snack. I think the goal was to transform the Necrons into weapons against Chaos/the Warp.

From here, I have some possible conclusions. The Necrons were designed to be a C'tan-controlled slave army against Chaos/the Warp. To this end, one of two things happened: their souls were reduced to almost nothing to give these warriors protection from it (see what I said about the Tau), or the Necrontyr never had big souls at all (ie there is no change in their soul between being a Necrontyr and a Necron), and the major change between the two is their actual mind being overriden with Necron programming (see Necron master control program, etc). I think I prefer the second.

That actually makes boatloads of sense. Perfect explanation that fits into the fluff for both the Newcrons and the Eldar. I prefer the second option as well. Not only does it fit in better with the description of the Necrontyr, but it's got interesting conspiracies attached about the similarities with the Tau and Necrons looking for new biological bodies.

Also, for me, it answers why the Necrons would bother looking for new biological bodies at all. If the Necrons' souls remain intact in any way, then they could possible resurrect their race.

Brilliant!

On blanks and necrons- in the necron 3rd ed codex there was a unit called a Pariah, which were implied to be the next generation of Necron, a T-1000 to the standard necron's T-800.
Pariahs were soulless, and their presence was an anathema to the warp. Given that the necrons also had sophisticated null tech, it would indeed seem that pre-ward C'tan were trying to fight the warp, and separate the material realm from the immaterium.
It's also been implied that the C'tan had a hand in creating blanks, probably when they were experimenting on how to create Pariahs. There was a story about this in the 3rd ed book, where a Farseer wanted to destroy a Culexus temple, but every outcome she saw in the future involved the craftworld being destroyed, something that the Imperium could not do. This indicated a connection between the Necrons and blanks.

But then the retcon came, and got rid of all of that, so now we have egyptian themed robot warring states undergoing an existential crisis, who somehow shattered gods but can't work out how to use their dimensional tech to travel through wormholes instead of hijacking the webway.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
On blanks and necrons- in the necron 3rd ed codex there was a unit called a Pariah, which were implied to be the next generation of Necron, a T-1000 to the standard necron's T-800.
Pariahs were soulless, and their presence was an anathema to the warp. Given that the necrons also had sophisticated null tech, it would indeed seem that pre-ward C'tan were trying to fight the warp, and separate the material realm from the immaterium.
It's also been implied that the C'tan had a hand in creating blanks, probably when they were experimenting on how to create Pariahs. There was a story about this in the 3rd ed book, where a Farseer wanted to destroy a Culexus temple, but every outcome she saw in the future involved the craftworld being destroyed, something that the Imperium could not do. This indicated a connection between the Necrons and blanks.

Yeah I quite liked that little tie-in. Gave you a horrifying glimpse of what the galaxy would be like under Necron rule.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
But then the retcon came, and got rid of all of that, so now we have egyptian themed robot warring states undergoing an existential crisis, who somehow shattered gods but can't work out how to use their dimensional tech to travel through wormholes instead of hijacking the webway.

Oh god, don't get me started on the overpowered soap-opera that is the Necron background at the moment. If there's any bit of fluff I could nuke from orbit and start again, it would be the Necron 5th ed. Codex.

I definitely think it can be salvaged by the careful ignoring of a sizeable portion of the fluff as propaganda and hearsay, and still keep some of the more popular elements like different dynasties and such.

Hell, I'd just go for toning down the whole 'Tomb Kings, in spaaace' thing they have going on.

It's like the Space Wolves. Before, they were warrior-barbarians drawing on many different aspects of scandinavian and other barbarian cultures with a grimdark 40k twist. Now, it's like the writer saw the word 'Wolf' in their name and has decided that they're single-faceted wolfy McWolf-lovers who are one step away from re-naming their Bolters 'Wolfers' for their Wolf Guard to use alongside their Wulfen, Fenrisian Wolves and Wolf Priests.

Jeez. Broaden your sources for inspiration.

/endrant

I remember the Pariahs of old. They never really made a lot of sense. The new fluff is certainly a lot worse, though. They can time-travel and dimension-warp and blow up stars at will as well, apparently. It's dumb.

The Eldar are certainly not "completely alien minds to us", though. In no way at all. They might have mysterious goals and plans more far-reaching than a human's, but their psyche is far too human to be considered anything but. Besides, a connection to their ancient enemy wouldn't be a "completely alien" reason to abhor something. I didn't mean that the Eldar dealt with the Necrontyr (which may not have ever been possible; I'm fairly certain they were created to fight the Necrons and not the Necrontyr), but that they can view the Necrons with disgust and hatred without that tainting their perspective on what they used to be. Actually I meant that the hatred for the Necrons would be furthered by an existing cultural abhorrence of necromancy; they can feel bad for the poor Necrontyr for being turned into such awful things.

On that topic, it doesn't make them "prissy" to not widely embrace necromancy. Any more than humans are "prissy" for not regularly engaging in cannibalism. There are a lot of reasons I could write at length about, especially cultural, but I'll focus on the "it's pragmatic" front; it's not entirely. To the Eldar, their souls are the most important part of them, and drawing them from their rest is a great risk. Spirit stones can be recovered. Furthermore, wraith-constructs can't participate in the same sort of fighting that normal Eldar warriors do. The greatest defence of the Eldar is denying their foe the ability to actually shoot at them. Wraiths can't be so agile, they can't strike and melt away before the enemy can react. Wraiths fight as a glacial bulwark, defeating enemy fire only by their incredible durability. Their very nature invites greater risk to the spirits within.

As for the Necrons, well, part of my ramble was to determine how much the soul is actually necessary for a person to be a person. It's entirely possible that they could be literally without a soul, but still a sapient, thinking, feeling being (a "person"). Whatever your opinions on the nature of the soul in reality, in 40k we don't have answers to all these questions. This is why I brought up Servitors, because we know they have souls despite not being "people" any more. We have no evidence to suggest that the opposite is impossible. It'd still be plenty grimdark for a Necron's mind to be a digital copy of a long-dead Necrontyr, believing themselves to be that person in all respects but trapped in this awful metal shell.



For the Necrons whose minds are still intact, returning to their previous state of biological existence isn't about resurrecting those specific individuals who were converted, I don't think, but rather their species as a whole. This is something wholly apart from whether or not they have souls. It's a racial sort of patriotism, a desire to not be extinct, and to no longer exist only as mostly-mindless undead monsters.

As for "not completely alien aliens in sci-fi", well, that's a whole other topic. It's not that terribly far-fetched, though. Most of what gives us our personality is directly related to our evolution. We don't act the way we do just for the sake of it, which is why we can draw parallels between our behaviour and the behaviour of even the least intelligent things on the planet - micro-organisms, invertebrates, and even plants. Every organism has evolved to survive, and its behavioural characteristics reflect that. Those animals which share common ecological niches with us tend to be more and more similar to us for this reason. This isn't to say that these common sci-fi tropes are necessarily realistic, but it's not as bad as all that.

That said, I do agree that the Newcrons are far too human. They are written with no attempt to make them seem different. Actually, they're just written like bad cartoon villains. Even without considering their alien nature, their writing misses any of the excellent (and tragic) opportunities presented by their backstory in favour of generic sneering villain dialogue. It doesn't help that their "oh-so-superior" attitude just makes them sound like Eldar as well.

I'm curious; do you consider Orks to fit the category of being "alien minds"? Because they're not, either. They have very simple motivations that we can easily understand. But importantly, as a part of a narrative, they have a character to them. The Newcrons just don't.

EDIT: The Newcrons are very much Tomb Kings in space, yes. It's stupid because the Tomb Kings aren't a horror-themed faction, despite appearances. They would have done much better by drawing thematic inspiration from the Vampire Counts (especially Strigoi), from what little I understand of Fantasy (all second-hand from conversations with friends and the occasional wiki trawl).

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
They can time-travel and dimension-warp and blow up stars at will as well, apparently. It's dumb...they're just written like bad cartoon villains. Even without considering their alien nature, their writing misses any of the excellent (and tragic) opportunities presented by their backstory in favour of generic sneering villain dialogue.

This. It's at the core of what makes the Newcrons a bit pants. There's so much potential, but it's just missed. I definitely agree that drawing on Vampire Counts is a better draw-through from Fantasy. That seemed to be the theme of the Oldcrons, with their Star Vampires and legions of undead slaves, alongside a heavy Aztec theme of sacrificing to malevolent gods and a predisposition towards flaying.

They've completely ripped the fear out of the Necrons by changing the fluff, and then panicked to try and make them seem scary again so shoe-horned in stupid tech levels to try and make them scary again. Ham-fisted.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Besides, a connection to their ancient enemy wouldn't be a "completely alien" reason to abhor something. I didn't mean that the Eldar dealt with the Necrontyr (which may not have ever been possible; I'm fairly certain they were created to fight the Necrons and not the Necrontyr), but that they can view the Necrons with disgust and hatred without that tainting their perspective on what they used to be. Actually I meant that the hatred for the Necrons would be furthered by an existing cultural abhorrence of necromancy; they can feel bad for the poor Necrontyr for being turned into such awful things.

I think we're arguing the same point here, agreed on all fronts.

When it comes to how alien the minds of the other races are to humans in 40k, I think you underestimate their differences. Just because we can comprehend their motivations, doesn't mean our minds are anything alike. It just means that, as a hold-out from out hunter-gatherer past, we're quite good at adapting how our minds think to other organisms (check out how the Hadza tribe hunt for an example of this).

Understandably, GW have to keep a certain degree of relatablility with their races for their business model to work. It's not high sci-fi where it's fully explored just how different life can be. However, sometimes it's fun to treat it as such and just run with it

Both the eldar and the orks look ostensibly like humans, which means that they likely evolved under similar conditions on their homeworlds which would insinuate certain similarities. However, at some point in their pre-history they were 'uplifted' by the Old Ones and fashioned into a weapon of war to use in a galactic-scale conflict. How do we know how much the Old Ones altered their perceptions from what was already different to humans? That's assuming that they even evolved in the first place, and weren't created entirely by the Old Ones. That would scupper any level of similarity from ecological niche.

Utterly alien like you'd expect something like a Lovecraftian Elder God to be, no, but certainly a lot more different to you and I than you'd think.

Of course, humans could be a creation of the Old Ones too in which case their similarities in thinking make a ton more sense

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
It'd still be plenty grimdark for a Necron's mind to be a digital copy of a long-dead Necrontyr, believing themselves to be that person in all respects but trapped in this awful metal shell.

Yeah I'm perfectly happy with the grimdarkness of that situation. Makes it futile for them to find new biological bodies as well, unless as you say it's simply a desire to resurrect their race.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
It doesn't help that their "oh-so-superior" attitude just makes them sound like Eldar as well.

Yeah that's an issue I've found with Necrons actually. I've tried to think of what I'd do with them if I was given the fluff, and it's hard to steer them away from other races' MOs.

Oldcrons were accused of being 'metal Tyranids'.
Newcrons are 'mustachioed metal Eldar+1'.
My first idea focusing heavily on the 'harvest the living' aspect turned out too close to 'metal Dark Eldar', but would explain why they'd bother fighting the Tyranids at all.

They're tricky, although I definitely think the 'metal Tyranids' version is the best so far.

What would you do?

Hmm good question.
I would probably bring back the 3rd ed incarnation, and expand upon them being effectively lawful-evil counterparts to the chaos god's chaotic-evil alignment.
Maybe make them a bit like the borg, except instead of converting flesh they convert psyches as a means of reproduction (sort of like in SOMA).

The scarabs could be like the replicants from stargate; their function is to reduce materials to their molecular constituents, which are then used to make more necrodermis and scarabs. The problem though is that this would make the necrons too powerful and there would be no reason to have humanoid bodies, as if you have that capability the most logical thing to do would be to release some scarabs and wait until they finish eating the world.
In short, such a concept would make them better tyranids.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Hmm good question.
I would probably bring back the 3rd ed incarnation, and expand upon them being effectively lawful-evil counterparts to the chaos god's chaotic-evil alignment.
Maybe throw in some references to the borg, except instead of converting flesh they convert psyches as a means of reproduction (sort of like in SOMA)

Yeah that's definitely the way I'd go as well. Rather than 'assimilate', they would 'harvest' the other races.

It's just too good of a word not to use.

Extra grimdark points if an eldar can sense that the psyche that's been harvested is another eldar that was harvested during the War in Heaven. Would explain again why they hate them so much (and again, lend weight to why they dislike using wraith constructs).

I'll definitely look up SOMA. I'm a sucker for anything that makes you step back and question what your morality or beliefs actually are.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
On that topic, it doesn't make them "prissy" to not widely embrace necromancy. Any more than humans are "prissy" for not regularly engaging in cannibalism.

I thought I'd just expand a little on why I think 'avoiding the perception of prissyness' is quite important for Eldar.

Eldar are basically elves, in spaaace.

I think it's very difficult to get elves right in most fantasy settings. They carry a stigma of being effeminate for a number of reasons, which does not gel well with general theme of 40k.

Elves as we know them come from Tolkein, where their depiction (think books, not the films) is as a practically immortal race that basically doesn't give a flying feth about anything else in the world around them. Their immortality is the core defining difference between us and them.

To an elf, it's less the trope that you're racist and more that nothing really matters very much if you live forever. If a bunch of humans are fighting each other on your doorstep, why is it your problem? If you just wait, it'll go away eventually. Apply that thinking further, and what's the point in doing anything that's not to do with you because nothing lasts as long as you do and there's no point expending effort on something that's only going to matter for 100 years or so?

Elves just don't care. That's their defining feature.

One of my favourite depictions of elves is in Tolkein's Lords and Ladies:

Not caring doesn't mean you just sit there and do nothing. Not caring, at its heart, is what psychopaths do.

If you just do not care, how can you ever empathise with anything? What is stopping you from viewing the world and everything in it as your personal plaything, and it's so amusing when the playthings squeal so before they die.

The elves of Tolkein are predators. First and foremost.

If you stray too far from those core ideas, then all elves become is beardless skinny humans that speak in high pitched voices.

Hence being very careful to expunge 'priss' from anything elf-related.

Spoiler for the kickass Banner Saga below:


Apply that to the Orks and the Eldar, and you get something that is very different to humans indeed.

Whether they have souls or not is irrelevant. What the vast majority of Necrons lack is sapience. Returning the Warriors (which are, like, 99% of the Necron population) to flesh bodies only gets you some mindless, living creatures... basically akin to servitors.

Prior to bio-transference, the Warriors were all the artisans, laborers, educators, merchants, artists, musicians and, yes, soldiers of the Necrontyr society. Now? Now they're just mindless killing machines.

In order to defeat the Old Ones, and then the C'Tan, the Necrons sacrificed everything their culture had. The only ones left with any degree of sapience are the royals and the techs... but the royals don't know how to do anything other than lead, and the techs don't know how to do anything except make more machines. All the other aspects of an actual, functioning society are lost to them.

 Psienesis wrote:
Whether they have souls or not is irrelevant. What the vast majority of Necrons lack is sapience. Returning the Warriors (which are, like, 99% of the Necron population) to flesh bodies only gets you some mindless, living creatures... basically akin to servitors.

Prior to bio-transference, the Warriors were all the artisans, laborers, educators, merchants, artists, musicians and, yes, soldiers of the Necrontyr society. Now? Now they're just mindless killing machines.

In order to defeat the Old Ones, and then the C'Tan, the Necrons sacrificed everything their culture had. The only ones left with any degree of sapience are the royals and the techs... but the royals don't know how to do anything other than lead, and the techs don't know how to do anything except make more machines. All the other aspects of an actual, functioning society are lost to them.

That's why, personally, I like the idea that their souls remain trapped in their metal sarcophagi, or rather some vestige of who each one was in life. Otherwise, there would literally be zero point in trying to find new biological bodies. What's the point of trying to resurrect your culture if there's nothing to resurrect?

This is assuming that the soul, the mind, and sapience is all interconnected. How do we know that servitors' souls don't remain as snapshots of their minds, screaming from within their fleshy cages? The mind-wipe could just cut off the connection to the soul, assuming that the soul is a part of your mind that lingers eternally.

I like your description of how the Necrons sacrificed everything to beat the Old Ones, and there's nothing left but their leaders and techs who are stuck in a loop of doing what they were always doing. That's definitely more grimdark than any other description here.

The only issue I have with it is that it's hopeless.

One thing I've noticed about all the factions in 40k is that, no matter how dire their situation, there is always the faintest glimmer of hope that they can fight their way out. That glimmer of hope is important. It's like a backlight to tragedy, letting you see it to its fullest extent.

You could make it so both of them could be true if you want.

Research Notes, M65.39.874. Personal Encryption Alpha 1
Every so often, there will be a little glitch in a random Necron warrior. The faintest of oddities that cannot be explained through their programming. Most puzzling to the Crypteks.

Why do they insist on screaming when they're cut down in battle? Why is it that every so often, a warrior pause at its reflection for no tactical benefit?

Are these simply echoes, persisting as faint reflections through the millennia, or are our people still in there somehow?

We were tricked. Uncountable years ago. Our lords and masters would stop at nothing to defeat their dreadful enemies the Old Ones. Every man, woman and child was sacrificed on the alter of war to bring victory. Victory for whom? Not me, certainly. Everything I was was taken from me on that day.

I will not rest until I bring my people salvation. Lords, Overlords, the Silent King himself. All those who annihilated my people will fall, and our echoes will have voice again.

I'd need to reword that slightly so it actually sounds like it's coming from a mad Necron Cryptek. Sounds too human at the moment. Maybe make it sound more frantic, like these questions it's asking don't compute, and are steadily driving it barking mad.

That would set up the possibility of failure at the last second, which again is an important part of the story of hope, and thus of grimdark. It could be that, against all odds, our eponymous Cryptek madman emerges victorious. The vast edifice he had his puppet Lord construct hums into life. Billions upon billions of bodies sit before him, gestating in tubes. He touches a glowing dial and galaxy-wide, Necron warriors of his dynasty slump over to the confusion of his foes. In the research chamber, the bodies stir into life. However, everything is not well. The bodies twitch, and from their mouths echo the last sentence they spoke, all those years ago, echoed again and again and again.

Sometimes, echoes are just echoes.

Of course, that's just a possible outcome that would likely never be explored in official fluff.

It also adds in the nuance that for all their technological artifice, Necrons really know absolutely nothing about the soul. That would fit with the general theme of faith in 40k, and with the C'Tan being unable to comprehend the warp.

Furthermore, through it you could bring back one of the things that actually made Necrons scary in the 3rd ed. codex: unity.

At the moment, they're squabbling petty warlords. Not scary in the slightest. Petty squabbling warlods don't tend to last long in the 40k universe.

If you make them unified again, but sleeping, you could use this rogue branch of Crypteks secretly working against their lords to resurrect their people. Or have the occasional lord that believes them, but cannot betray his position to the other lords around him.

Et voila! The GW prerequisite for justifying intra-faction conflict, a largely unified Necron force, a bit of subtle political intrigue and no hammy soap-opera squabbling!

tneva82 wrote:

Ynneadwraith wrote:
Yeah that's what I've always struggled with slightly. In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, when the Eldar race is on the very brink of destruction, they get a bit prissy about disturbing their dead. When the Eldar go to extraordinary lengths to preserve their living citizens, and the use of wraith constructs would doubtless save many, many lives, they still wait until the last second to do it.

That's risking the dead from rest to fate worse than death. You seriously don't see why they might have qualms about dooming their own members to fate worse than death?

Funnily enough, we know that the Eldar empire used to have hordes of slave robots and that Craftworld Eldar can make war robots but choose not to in order to avoid starting down the decadent path. So violating the peace of the dead and risking their very souls ranks somewhere below drone warfare on the Eldar scale of improperly.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Funnily enough, we know that the Eldar empire used to have hordes of slave robots and that Craftworld Eldar can make war robots but choose not to in order to avoid starting down the decadent path. So violating the peace of the dead and risking their very souls ranks somewhere below drone warfare on the Eldar scale of improperly.

We do! Most of their warfare pre-fall was done with 'psychomatons'.

My personal view on that is that they weren't robots as we'd imagine them to be. AI and general computing doesn't seem to appear within the Eldar technology tree anywhere, so I don't think they were like the Men of Iron. They were robots as the Eldar would be able to create. That is, a wraithbone shell with an obedient (probably Khaine-based) daemon bound to them. Post-fall, they would be unable to summon these daemons either because their gods were dead, or because their psychic powers are shackled by hiding from Slaanesh.

That would provide a couple of reasons why they can't use their most powerful weapons, other than 'fear of being decadent'.

I see fear of being decadent to be a major shaping factor in their culture, but offering a couple of varied explanations and motivations helps to flesh out a faction plus, I always feel like factions with superweapons need solid gold reasons why they can't use them, or else they'd be using them all the time in the desperate straits they're in at the moment...

I like that explanation. It ties in with the War in Heaven and the Eldar's role in it. It also lets me use dryads or Kurnous hunters as ancient Eldar wraith constructs...

I imagine that the more modern, techno-plastic look of wraithlords and the like might have to do with post-WiH/post-enslaver Eldar relying much more on the technology aspect and less on pure Warp Magic to animate their constructs, power their ships, and so on. While their technology is still dependent upon mastery of the warp, perhaps now the role of the warp in manufacture and operation of their technology has been more safely buffered. Once Ynnead defeats Slannesh, though, the Eldar would be free to unshackle their mystical abilities.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That word was supposed to be "impropriety" BTW.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I like that explanation. It ties in with the War in Heaven and the Eldar's role in it. It also lets me use dryads or Kurnous hunters as ancient Eldar wraith constructs...

I imagine that the more modern, techno-plastic look of wraithlords and the like might have to do with post-WiH/post-enslaver Eldar relying much more on the technology aspect and less on pure Warp Magic to animate their constructs, power their ships, and so on. While their technology is still dependent upon mastery of the warp, perhaps now the role of the warp in manufacture and operation of their technology has been more safely buffered. Once Ynnead defeats Slannesh, though, the Eldar would be free to unshackle their mystical abilities.

Exactly!

I've got an idea brewing to make a Croneworld Eldar army of Eldar using the Chaos Daemons and Chas Space Marines codices. Either they are surviving living Eldar that dedicated themselves to Slaanesh and she kept them alive, or they're apparitions/conjurations of Slaanesh for amusement. I'm leaving it purposefully ambiguous.

I'm going to use Fateweaver as an unfettered Eldar psyker, Daemonettes as 'Pleasure Cultists' and Pink Horrors as 'Aethervessels' (weaker Eldar psykers that are tethered to the unfettered psyker).

Then, using the CSM codex, I'll port across Obliterators and Warp Talons to represent the warp-twisted Psychomatons that the Eldar use (with Mark of Nurgle to make them T5). Modelling-wise, I thought Sylvaneth Spite Revenants would look really cool for psychomatons, and Drycha Hamadreth would make a kickass Soul Grinder...

What would you use for an Avatar of Slaanesh? The Eldar seem designed to create their own warp entities and then become vessels for said warp entities. I suppose a Harlequin Solitaire would work, but seems kind of tame next to the Sylvaneth units.

Twist:

Necrons are actually the spiritual successors of the Five Nights at Freddys Animatronics. The Old Ones actually drew heavily from the work of the purple guy.

BUM BUM BUUUUUUUUM!

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What would you use for an Avatar of Slaanesh? The Eldar seem designed to create their own warp entities and then become vessels for said warp entities. I suppose a Harlequin Solitaire would work, but seems kind of tame next to the Sylvaneth units.

I think just a plain old Keeper of Secrets would do the job nicely, as far as an Eldar being a vessel for a daemon plus, Greater Daemons sort of already are avatars of the ruinous powers...

The Avatar for the CW Eldar is a little unique as it's a fragment of an Eldar god. I wouldn't think these chaos Eldar would have one.

The showpiece would definitely be the Drycha/Soul Grinder. Could use rules for a Daemon Prince for them as well if I wanted...

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I dont think it was ever argued they did not. Their souls were ripped from them and put into the metal bodies, or at least a fragment was, so tahts why they are all salty ass holes.

Nah, they were salty donkey-caves from the get-go, who else builds cities that are their future tombs and doesn't think of making comodities?

I like the old fluff's hints that the War in Heaven between the Necrons and Old Ones was multi-galactic in scale. It makes sense for two empires with such fast FTL and so much time on their hands to spread out, especially when trying to find safe havens distant or hidden from the enemy. The Oldcron codex states that the Necrons had a star empire before life even evolved on Earth, so about 4 billion years ago. Even if we only want to interpret this to mean complex life, the Necrontyr had about a billion years of expansions and wars before they entered their stasis crypts. Even with STL travel, I would expect them to have sent sleeper ships as far as possible in an attempt to escape their supercancer radiation/dynastic wars/Old Ones/resource shortages. Once they gain their inertialess FTL and teleportation portals, there is no reason for them to keep all of their eggs within striking range of the Webway or any galaxy harboring psyker races, other than that they can't because the Old Ones are expanding at a similar rate.

Also, the existence of the Cadian Pylons indicates that the Necrons knew how to cut off the warp when they were last active, presumably during the War in Heaven. Unless they built those pylons immediately after the Fall of the Eldar to hem in the Eye of Terror, it is reasonable to assume the Necrons had built a number of such pylons near the population centers of the Old Ones' psyker races, although they were unable to finish the Great Warding in our galaxy. There's also no reason to think the C'Tan had not cultivated a source of Pariahs in the distant past--lack of evidence is not compelling since the Eldar and other psyker races would have been inclined to exterminate all Pariah-bearing species during the great sleep. The only reason the Imperium still has the Culexis Temple is because a Farseer saw that Necrons would wipe out Alaitoc (at the very least) if the Eldar destroyed the temple.

Therefore, ancient Eldar would have needed technology, and perhaps even Infinity Circuits, Spirit Stones and the rest, in order to continue to resist the Necrons capable of fielding Pariahs or Pylons. Wraith constructs would begin to look more like machines and less like daemonhosts, as would guns, tanks and ships. Similarly, the krork would have needed weapons and language that functioned without their warp gestalt, as well as the Slann, Hrud and so on.

I bring this up in hopes of fleshing out some of my own ideas for my High Eldar force, which would use Elves, Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Harlequin bits to represent the different gear and armor the Eldar would have cycled through over a hundred million years or more. The idea is that they were living in another galaxy, one that had been devastated millions of years ago by the Tyranids to explain their small numbers and lack of multi-galactic impact. This other galaxy is more heavily Warded by the Necrons, mostly in response to the Tyranid threat which mobilized the C'Tan known as The Sphinx (guess which model I'm using) far earlier than the Deceiver. The High Eldar were therefore psychically shielded from the birth of Slaanesh, although the longer they spend in our galaxy the more susceptible they become. They have come with their Slann, Krork, Hrud and other allies to gather a force capable of liberating their own galaxy only to find the situation here even more dire than they had feared.


After mostly defeating the Tyranids, and millions of years of Sapient-Husbandry, the Sphinx has begun to look around for another, fresher flavor of intelligence to snort like crack. The presence of other C'Tan and active Necrons has caused The Sphinx to slow his advance to a crawl, investigating every facet of our galaxy's situation to create the biggest impact when he makes his presence known.

Anyway, that is where my personal Necron, Eldar and Ork projects were when 5th edition dropped and put them on long-term hiatus. Any ideas on how to bridge some of the current fluff gaps?

Interesting theories I especially like the technological slope that forced the Eldar to adapt from daemonhost-like armies to technological psychomatons.

Interesting expanded universe theory as well. Which fluff gaps would you need to bridge, assuming that the Necrontyr and Old Ones did expand past this galaxy*?

*Not something I ascribe to, but interesting to think through.

The fluff gaps would be all of the differences between 3rd and 5th Necron interpretations. Older fluff had a larger scope. Nightbringer explicitly mentions that the C'Tan's ship had fought in other galaxies, but all of that seems to have been retconned. I'm not as familiar with the post-5th edition fluff since I did not enjoy what I read of it. Also, most of my knowledge comes from Xenology and the 3rd edition codex, so if there is more material of that era in some of the FFG supplements or Liber Chaotica, I would need to integrate that.

I also like to believe that the Necrons are somehow related to the Old Ones, either an early creation of theirs or perhaps the non-psychic 'residue' of one of the pre-warp-being Old One species, left behind rather than uplifted. The Tyranids also fit well as an Old One creation that eventually went off the rails the way the krork did. I like to keep the setting simple by assuming connections between all the humanoid and/or warp-manipulating species. For me, that is more logical than pretending a whole bunch of humanoids just happened to evolve independently.