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Actually, the necrons do have an exchange program, in that they exchange bits and pieces of people just to see how they work.

The old wraiths were described as having surgical equipment, which indicates the necrons used them to harvest specimens from other lifeforms.

Now they are just maintenance droids though, which isn't really as menacing as before.
I would actually love if they brought back the old wraith (in terms of background and purpose), complete with RP, and a polished design, though still serpentine, of course. It would need a new name though.
Maybe something like Preta (Hungry Ghost from Buddhism), Draugr (basically a Norse revenant), Dullahan (headless ghost), or Nachzehrer (german vampire created from suicide), Yurei (japanese ghost). I don't know, names are hard.

Oh yeah one of the mystery things about Necrons before the rewrite is that they would swoop past remote settlements and just steal everybody living there..

Or they would rock up and abduct Pariahs

One of my favorite depictions of Necrons was from the Soul Drinkers novel "Hellforged".

The novel overall was meh, but the depiction of Flayed ones I thought was terrific especially.

Helps that they were not c grade movie fleshing eating zombie robots conjured from the mind of Matticus Wardicus, destroyer of lore...

I don't get the anti-Egyptian stuff, even the original models had nods to Egyptian themes, subtle, but they were there.

Also while a freaking hate them on the table top, the Newcron lore ain't that bad. I do prefer the only personality coming from the lords though. The rest being soulless....things.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
I don't get the anti-Egyptian stuff, even the original models had nods to Egyptian themes, subtle, but they were there.

Also while a freaking hate them on the table top, the Newcron lore ain't that bad. I do prefer the only personality coming from the lords though. The rest being soulless....things.

I underlined the important bit.
The egyptian element was just that, an element. It did not define the necrons and just added a hint of flavor. In fact, the Egyptian aspect was more of a reference to the Egyptian mortuary cult, and not a direct reference to Egypt, like how the Tomb Kings were.
In fact, you can argue that the overall theme of Oldcrons was death and to a lesser extent, rebirth, NOT egypt, which is why you have a coffin motif (not egyptian), the grim reaper (not egyptian), spiders (not really egyptian, more of a western horror thing), Flayed Ones (more of an aztec reference than egyptian. See Xipe Totec)
You might say that they have scarabs, which are an Egyptian symbol. That is true. Scarabs were an Egyptian symbol of death and rebirth, that fit with the aforementioned overall theme of the necrons.

Now you have the newcrons, with their Dynasties, their honor guards, their ancient world boat styled vehicles that really don't fit in with the army, as

A) They don't look anything like the monolith, which you'd think they'd based the new vehicles on because, you know, it's THE necron vehicle.
B) They are inconsistent with the lore, as why would a race obsessed with escaping death create military vehicles that expose the pilots. Instead of, you know, using automated weapons. Like canopteks and how the monolith used to be before Ward decided to give them crew
C) They have huge gaping weakpoints. Because when I think Necrons, I think Dark Eldar.

To summarize - Oldcrons were Egyptian flavored murder bots

Newcrons are murderbot flavored Egyptians.

Its almost as if GW forgot how to be subtle, and instead made everything as blatantly on the nose as possible. See: Space Wolves.


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 King Pariah wrote:
One of my favorite depictions of Necrons was from the Soul Drinkers novel "Hellforged".

The novel overall was meh, but the depiction of Flayed ones I thought was terrific especially.

Helps that they were not c grade movie fleshing eating zombie robots conjured from the mind of Matticus Wardicus, destroyer of lore...

Yeah, pre 5th ed Flayed Ones had a more existential horror thing going on.
Their deal was that they were necrons who somehow remembered their past organic life and were driven insane by it. The skins they wear are actually them trying to regain their organic form.
Much more disturbing than "hurr, you are cursed to eat people now, because zombie robots"

The problem about the oldcron fluff is that a lot of the interesting lore bits are outside of the codex, so most people tend to miss out on the good elements of the pre-ward fluff.
The codex only tells like a quarter of the story. You have to find the rest.

Once again CthululsSpy has it nailed.

It's less that the Egyptian references are bad because they're Egyptian, it's because they're so heavy-handed and blatant. It is the Space Wolf thing again. Not bad in itself, but so heavy handed it's just crap.

I suppose you could look at it as the newer stuff seems really one-dimensional.

Space Wolves could pull references from a whole host of Nordic/Saxon/Celtic cultures and mythologies, blend it all together with some grimdark and come up with something really damn cool. Instead, they've just stuck 'wolf' or 'fang' or 'claw' on every single model and called it a day.

Necrons used to pull subtle references from Egyptian funerary cults, Aztec sacrifice-culture, Western Reapers and zombie tropes,and a little bit of HP Lovecraft. Then, it mixed it all together with a dash of grimdark into something that felt unique in itself. You could see the references were there, but none of them overpowered the others (or the unique thinking).

Now, we literally have Tomb Kings in space, which is a lot more damning than I think people. It means it's derivative. Unimaginative.

Oh, and I absolutely love the old Flayed One fluff. Necrons who through an error in the machinery (possibly purposeful) remained awake for 60 million years, driven insane by the relentless onslaught of time. How straight-up awesome is that?

@Cathuluspy and Ynead I completely agree with everything you two have said. GW somehow missed the part that the vast majority of fans (at least semi-hardcore and up) like about the 40k universe - it is so large, with so many contradicting plots, half-remembered events, etc. that people can feel free to let their imaginations run wild and create something of their own. I liked how the old codices were mostly written from the perspective the imperium's reports about the races, you were trying to figure them out as much as they were. To that point, they also messed up the Orks by claiming that they were created by the Old Ones. I will always prefer my own theory that the Grots used to be the Greenskin master race and the Orks were their bio-engineered bodyguards...until they rebelled, shattered the Grot "civilization," and the entire greenskin race fell into a state of barbarity that they have never been able to reverse.

 Kroem wrote:
That would make some sense, they wanted to isolate Medusa from the warp so that they could conduct their red harvest in peace didn't they?

Do Newcrons still even do red harvests? What is their motivation for them?

Kind of, some necrons are looking to reverse transference, so they have been harvesting the lesser races and conducting cruel experiments on them en masse, looking to find/create suitable hosts. I'm not sure it will work, but it explains the continuation of the red harvest.

It's also possible that old crons are still out there, it wasn't any of the known dynasties that contacted dragon on mars (which is still a canon event). If the current dynasties knew there was still a c'tan still around and unfractured they wouldn't be sending scouts to contact it, they would be sending war fleets to capture and fracture it. Hell, that would probably be enough to get the silent king to dust off his spurs. The C'tan took the form of the necron'tyr gods, so after the silent king granted them free(ish) will, it's not unlikely that some necrons went back to worshipping them as such. They were still bound by his last command to sleep, so they would be awakening along with everyone else.

I think the Egyptian references in the Oldcrons were in part a nod to Lovecraft (Nyarlathotep).

Probably. It was still mostly about the mortuary cult aspect, rather than Egypt as a whole. That was more of the Thousand Sun's deal.

Yeah agreed on the whole 'it's up to you to do the legwork to find out about these guys' thing. That was one of their best aspects.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Probably. It was still mostly about the mortuary cult aspect, rather than Egypt as a whole. That was more of the Thousand Sun's deal.

And even with the KSons i think it's OTT, tack amd uninspired. Haven't put in as much effort into working out how to fix them though...

Speaking of Nyarlthotep, I think the Deceiver might have been based off of him.
Nyarlthotep was described as being a manipulator as well as the mastermind behind several cults, just as the Deceiver manipulated the Necrontyr into following the C'tan.

Also, one of Nyarlthotep's manifestations is described as being a giant with a tentacle for a head (the Howler in the Dark), and the Deceiver does appear to have several tentacle like appendages coming off of his head.

If I get a hold of a metal Deceiver, I might paint him black as a reference to Nyarly.
Though one of nyarly's manifestations also takes the form of a gelatinous mass with golden tentacles, gold is fine too I guess.