Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

How do!

So here’s a background poser with, to the best of my knowledge, no answer.

See, before the Necrons, you had the Necrontyr. By our standards a proper ancient race. Like, staggeringly ancient. Due to the radiation of their home system’s star, they were short lived, and became jealous of The Old One’s apparent immortality.

The 3rd (4th?) Ed Necron codex, if memory serves, frames the forthcoming war as being triggered by The Old Ones refusing to share their secrets with the Necrontyr. One thing lead to another, and we get where are now.

Yet…..as part of their own War Effort, the Old Ones are said to have created and taught The Eldar, at least created The Krork (still not necessarily confirmed to be modern Orks) and have seeded Terra with what would eventually become Humanity.

But…why not share that secret? I mean, Eldar are, by human standards, very long lived. Granted not without eventual downsides, but long lived all the same. If Orks are Krorks? They too seem to be functionally long lived, if they weren’t so keen on picking fights and perishing one another and indeed everything else in their path.

That in itself begs the question of perspective. When you look at any functionally immortal species (not invulnerable. Two separate traits), isn’t everyone short lived by comparison? Like, inherently so? So the ancient Necrontyr could still have had a life expectancy of ludicrous, to us, scale. As in Millenia.

Yet given The Old Ones saw fit to design, create and nurture entire species as a counter, rather than….just…..not be a Richard about it?

Why? What exactly was it about the Necrontyr they hated, feared, loathed etc?

Because the Old Ones were just Richards. They were arrogant and prideful in their power, viewing themselves as the custodians of the galaxy. They didn't give the Necrontyr their knowledge because it didn't fit with that self given role.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the "refuse to share their knowledge" thing was mostly just propaganda/an excuse to go to war. I was under the impression that the real point of starting the war was to unite the necrontyr against a common enemy to avoid civil war/collapse, and then things got out of hand.

That said, if I had some potentially really powerful technology, I'd be pretty reluctant to hand that advantage over to the necrons too. There's a scene in a necron novel where a necrontyr has a bunch of loyal soldiers executed just to teach a young noble a philosophy lesson. Plus, we know that the necrontyr had at least some predilection for war given that they had (very classist) formalized rules of war and the capacity to threaten the Old Ones (sort of).

We're talking about aliens with cultures we don't know much about, but I'd be pretty reluctant to give the necorntyr some of my best tech too.

EDIT: Plus, immortality isn't necessarily great for your psyche. Even the nicest guy might end up turning into a crazy egomaniac that collects people in stasis fields as a hobby. And we wouldn't want to make that guy immortal, now would we?

To counter, purely for the sake of argument?

What if prior to the Necrontyr getting violent, there’d been no violence? What if the Necrontyr decided the best way to get The Old Ones to the table was a lovely bit of slaughter? As in, “sit down and listen to us, or we’ll keep up with” OK I don’t know if genocide is quite the right word, because it’s such an inherently modern world “we don’t like you therefore you must all die, even though the only difference is you say Scone and I say Scone”


But hopefully you get what I’m aiming at.

That, due to how the Necrontyr went about trying to reach agreement, The Old Ones decided “oh my word you cannot be trusted with this”?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the "refuse to share their knowledge" thing was mostly just propaganda/an excuse to go to war. I was under the impression that the real point of starting the war was to unite the necrontyr against a common enemy to avoid civil war/collapse, and then things got out of hand.

That said, if I had some potentially really powerful technology, I'd be pretty reluctant to hand that advantage over to the necrons too. There's a scene in a necron novel where a necrontyr has a bunch of loyal soldiers executed just to teach a young noble a philosophy lesson. Plus, we know that the necrontyr had at least some predilection for war given that they had (very classist) formalized rules of war and the capacity to threaten the Old Ones (sort of).

We're talking about aliens with cultures we don't know much about, but I'd be pretty reluctant to give the necorntyr some of my best tech too.

EDIT: Plus, immortality isn't necessarily great for your psyche. Even the nicest guy might end up turning into a crazy egomaniac that collects people in stasis fields as a hobby. And we wouldn't want to make that guy immortal, now would we?

Well, I’m absolutely not going to say you’re wrong. But that’s not my own memory of that first explanatory background. I suspect we both could be right and wrong, as it was written with deliberate ambiguity? As ever I am very open to being cited as wrong!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
To counter, purely for the sake of argument?

What if prior to the Necrontyr getting violent, there’d been no violence? What if the Necrontyr decided the best way to get The Old Ones to the table was a lovely bit of slaughter? As in, “sit down and listen to us, or we’ll keep up with” OK I don’t know if genocide is quite the right word, because it’s such an inherently modern world “we don’t like you therefore you must all die, even though the only difference is you say Scone and I say Scone”


But hopefully you get what I’m aiming at.

That, due to how the Necrontyr went about trying to reach agreement, The Old Ones decided “oh my word you cannot be trusted with this”?

I mean, the necrontyr seem to have largely been classist jerks with little regard for those of other species. Even if you take the external violence out of the equation, you'd still be talking about making a species of egomaniacs obsessed with monuments and death into a permanent fixture of the galaxy. And probably expanding their scientific abilities in the process.

Ahh. But it’s their very limited life span which feeds into the Death Cult.

Remove Death, the prime motivator? Could you not, in your and now their infinite lifespan, bring them round?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ahh. But it’s their very limited life span which feeds into the Death Cult.

Remove Death, the prime motivator? Could you not, in your and now their infinite lifespan, bring them round?

Risky if it backfires.

For all we know, the Old Ones could have tried by giving the Necrontyr a test. It apparently wouldn't have been difficult for them to, say, double the lifespan of the Necrontyr- the response to this experiment could have demonstrated that giving longer lifespans to the Necrontyr was a thoroughly bad idea.

Ultimately, the Old Ones felt the Necrontyr were not worthy. We don't know why, but it is logical to infer it was because of the arrogance of the Old Ones, the suitability of the Necrontyr, or both.

Oh but Haighus…..who was the bunghole?

No sitting on the fence Not in this thread!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh but Haighus…..who was the bunghole?

No sitting on the fence Not in this thread!

Heh.

Methinks both were bungholes. Tis 40k, afterall. Well, maybe "negative many aeons K"...

I believe that the "refused to share the knowledge" is purely from the PoV of the Necrontyr.

IIRC, the Eldar say that the Old Ones simply couldn't help the Necrontyr extend their lives. They were too messed up by their homeworld. The Necrontyr in their desperation saw it as cruelty and treachery. And honestly it would be hard to blame them for thinking the Old Ones were lying.

The truth may be somewhere in the middle.

My reading of the 3rd ed book says nothing of the Old Ones "sharing a secret" or not. It just accounts how as the Necrons took their first steps towards colonizing space, they encountered the Old Ones already spread across the galaxy. The Old Ones having colonized so much faster, plus the added kick of naturally living much, much longer lives, quote: "kindled a burning hatred in the Necrontyr, which ate at them spiritually as much as their hideous cancers consumed them physically. [. . .] and the Necrontyr turned their entire civilization towards destroying the Old Ones and their spawn."

More details were added later on. As I recall there was an IRL Crusades-esque element of leadership pointing at a common foe so the necrontyr would stop fighting each other. Thing is it was initially no contest, as the Old Ones just won. Then came the C'Tan and the transformation into necrons, then the proper War in Heaven, and that's when the Old Ones seriously invested in making new races to help them out.

This is just personal recollection though, correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, that's about it.

It also doesn't necessarily follow that the ability to create new races like the Eldar and Krorks would give the Old Ones the ability to help the Necrontyr. They may simply have been unable to extend the life expectancy of the Necrontyr and this was taken as an insult by them.

Or, as others have pointed out, it was just a convenient common enemy for the Necrontyr to unite against. I'm not sure GW put much thought into it, but there is an element of potential frustration if a technologically advanced race sees its salvation as getting away from their homeworld and its deadly radiation, only to find they're too late and the galaxy has already been claimed by another race. To make matters worse, this race is more advanced, almost immortal and psychically powerful. To the Necrontyr that would have been like being kicked, stamped, burned and drowned while they were down.

Well the 'crons could have been immortal, but had their DNA messed up by radiation exposure, so the cancers and similar building up were horrific as your body would keep trying to live until you couldn't face it anymore.

Slipspace wrote:
It also doesn't necessarily follow that the ability to create new races like the Eldar and Krorks would give the Old Ones the ability to help the Necrontyr. They may simply have been unable to extend the life expectancy of the Necrontyr and this was taken as an insult by them.

I don't know. If you can design warrior species and give them psychic powers, it seems like you ought to be able to tweak 'cron genetics to repair whatever gene damage is causing the short life expectancies. 'Cron genes probably weren't that damaged given that they all seemed to be able-bodied and 'cron characters never make mention to any like, species-changing mutations or anything.

And then longevity is as simple as an imperial rejuv treatment or second astartes heart. Seems like the technology was probably within their means. Heck, seems like the technology should have been within the necrontyr's means too if they just invested some time and research into it.

Could easily have been some almost religious difference, the Old Ones are looking to seed an empty galaxy with new species - vs one that wants to have just their own species ruling the whole thing (with the current rulers still on top).

Plus if we take Terra into account, the Old Ones 'shaping of races' might also be propganda from the Eldar. The only shaping that they could really have done would have been in the form of adjusting the course of a giant rock to shake up the status quo.

The necrons might not have liked the kind of help they got from the Old Ones if it was more along those lines "Yes, your lives do seem terrible. We can correct that to allow for a better life to emerge - activate the supernova cannon"

It might also be that the Necrontyr DNA was so messed up that trying to fix the problem was so extensive that you basically had to start over.

So instead of curing and fixing them you'd more be taking an element of them and creating an entirely new race from them. Those already living would have died, those born new would be so different that, even if they shared a physical appearance, they'd be entirely different. Perhaps not even possible to be born from the Necrontyr themselves.




Necrontyr might well not have accepted such an answer or thought it a lie or were just so beneath the Old Ones (in the Old Ones view) that they weren't worth paying attention too.

Necrontyr were janky weeds in the Old Ones' carefully curated garden.

What if the old Necrontyr didn’t use DNA?
All the Old Ones’ creations do, though in different forms and adaptations, but there’s no actual law of the universe that says your heritable information has to be a long chain sugar polymer. Thus the OO simply had no expertise to share.

Besides, we all know the real bunghole is actually the Nightbringer; it was the one feeding on the Necrontyr home star and making it go all wonky.

My take was as the Necrontyr evolved without the aid/influence of the Old Ones around the same time as the Old Ones. They (the Old Ones) refused as they saw the Necrontyr as a very real contender to be the dominate species in the galaxy.

The Old Ones had mastery of the arcane, while the Necrontyr had mastery of science.

By not helping them the Old Ones thought they would be unrivalled... boy where they wrong.