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I understand that the Necrons only started waking up "recently" (last few millennia). In many cases, humans who had settled tomb-worlds were not aware that their cities were built on top of ancient ruins until the Necrons awoke and tried to take back their world.

But surely some Necron ruins were discovered before the awakening started?

.

-Guardsman- wrote:
I understand that the Necrons only started waking up "recently" (last few millennia). In many cases, humans who had settled tomb-worlds were not aware that their cities were built on top of ancient ruins until the Necrons awoke and tried to take back their world.

But surely some Necron ruins were discovered before the awakening started?

.

It's not stated clearly, but there are strong hints that there are elements of the AdMech on Mars that are C'tan cultists and may have access to Necron tech.

There was contact between humanity and Necrons/Necron technology.

For example, Sanguinius seems to have interacted with the Silent King, The Noctis Labyrinth had various Guardians of the Dragon, Rogue Trader Orpheus detailed finding structures and ruins amid the Mandragoran Stars during the Great Crusade, during the Scouring the Maynarkh were killing Alpha Legionnaires, the Order of the Dragon seems to have operated within the Mechanicum for some time and continued into the Adeptus Mechanicus...

Presumably Dark Age humans must have come across worlds like Cthelmax and Naogeddon as they explored the galaxy.

Hecaton wrote:

-Guardsman- wrote:
I understand that the Necrons only started waking up "recently" (last few millennia). In many cases, humans who had settled tomb-worlds were not aware that their cities were built on top of ancient ruins until the Necrons awoke and tried to take back their world.

But surely some Necron ruins were discovered before the awakening started?

.

It's not stated clearly, but there are strong hints that there are elements of the AdMech on Mars that are C'tan cultists and may have access to Necron tech.

I thought

 Overread wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

-Guardsman- wrote:
I understand that the Necrons only started waking up "recently" (last few millennia). In many cases, humans who had settled tomb-worlds were not aware that their cities were built on top of ancient ruins until the Necrons awoke and tried to take back their world.

But surely some Necron ruins were discovered before the awakening started?

.

It's not stated clearly, but there are strong hints that there are elements of the AdMech on Mars that are C'tan cultists and may have access to Necron tech.

I thought

Spoiler:

It was confirmed that the Emperor found one of the shards of The Void Dragon and buried it deep within the body of Mars so that the shard's influence would twist the scientists of Mars and drive them toward even greater efforts of technological creativity.

Semyon, who tells the story in Mechanicum, specifically states that he doesn't know if what he's telling is true, the story is internally inconsistent, doesn't make logical sense, and tales of dragon slaying are explicitly described as being metaphorical by another character.

The Emperor might have encountered the Void Dragon somehow in some form, but the likelyhood of him defeating it in single combat during the middle ages, and then taking it to Mars and building it a tomb seems... unlikely.

It's not confirmed but rather a theory of the Guardian of the Noctis Labyrinth just as the Heresy unfolded.

As for humanity knowing about the Necrons, ruins are ruins. There were thousands of races that had lived and died in the Milky Way before humanity even evolved from fish. To the Imperium any ruins are just proof that humanity is destined to be the dominant race.
One interesting tidbit is that all races have a sort of genetic fear of the Nightbringer due to the power it wields. The earth myth of the Grim Reaper is based on the Nightbringer in 40k.

Even tomb worlds were protected by the various Canoptek stuff. I don't imagine there would be many survivors from encountering such defenses to tell tale of secret tech hoards. If the world is sufficiently ruined that even the Canopteks are gone, then the remaining scraps are probably hard to distinguish from any other ancient lost civilization.

Any Necron world that wasn't turned into a tomb world, but was just abandoned, would have tens of millions of years to erase any trace of their presence.

Yes. No. Kind of. Ish?

We know humanity has known of the Necrons as an extinct former galactic power for a long time. Artefacts, digs, discoveries etc.

It’s also mentioned some Tomb Worlds were at least partially active as early as the Great Crusade. But to what extent is unclear. After all, running into Canoptek stuff isn’t the same as running into former Necrontyr.

But…that being said? The trouble with Necrons is they don’t really tend to leave much evidence. Their own fallen phase out, and their foes have a nasty habit of getting all disintegrated to death until they’re dead.

How many ghost ships or ghost settlements are due to Necron raids, and how many down to natural disaster, chaos, Dark Eldar etc.

Elements of the Imperium must've had some working knowledge of the C'Tan, at least, otherwise how did the Callidus Temple get access to so many C'Tan Phase Swords?

 Flinty wrote:
Even tomb worlds were protected by the various Canoptek stuff. I don't imagine there would be many survivors from encountering such defenses to tell tale of secret tech hoards.

Tell that to the Orks from Gorkamorka.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Even tomb worlds were protected by the various Canoptek stuff. I don't imagine there would be many survivors from encountering such defenses to tell tale of secret tech hoards.

Tell that to the Orks from Gorkamorka.

The last we saw of the Orks on Angelis, they were getting swept aside by the advancing Necrons, and by the time Imperial armies showed up, there was no mention of the Orks...

 Dysartes wrote:
Elements of the Imperium must've had some working knowledge of the C'Tan, at least, otherwise how did the Callidus Temple get access to so many C'Tan Phase Swords?

I think the source of them is a big AdMech secret.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Even tomb worlds were protected by the various Canoptek stuff. I don't imagine there would be many survivors from encountering such defenses to tell tale of secret tech hoards.

Tell that to the Orks from Gorkamorka.

The last we saw of the Orks on Angelis, they were getting swept aside by the advancing Necrons, and by the time Imperial armies showed up, there was no mention of the Orks...

Yes, the awakened ones, NOT the Canoptek stuff. Flinty's post was literally stuff that drove the game Gorkamorka pre-awakening. Gangs coming back and spreading rumors of a secret tech horde was a major plot point.

It is quite possible that earlier encounters were treated as isolated incidents, weird relics of some former empire, quirks not a pattern- it isn't until the 41st millennium that Necrons have started to wake en masse. This would be similar to how the Imperium thought the Ymgarl infestation was a single xenos encounter before eventually finding out they were the first known genestealer cult and a harbinger of the hive fleets. Imperial scholars (with sufficient clearance) can probably find isolated references consistent with Necron activity dating back thousands of years before Sanctuary 101.

It also appears a lot of tombs were very well hidden to avoid Aeldari retribution.

 Dysartes wrote:
Elements of the Imperium must've had some working knowledge of the C'Tan, at least, otherwise how did the Callidus Temple get access to so many C'Tan Phase Swords?

Pre-Codex Necrons, the C’Tan Phase Swords were ‘relics of an extinct species’

Even then developing a weapon using Xenos tech isn't something the Imperium won't do. It's nominally against the rules but the Mechanicus and Inquisition break those rules all the time, especially for organisations like the Assassinorum.
And IIRC it was a surprise when a Callidus tried to kill a C'tan with one and the C'tan just absorbed the blade into its body. Seems to be a case of "Hey this works but we don't know where it came from".

There are hints at Necron tombs on Medusa, and even past the big metal snake the Ferrus killed, there's talk of the tribes making expeditions to lost tombs and mad cyborgs clad in flesh.

Plus there is some serious mad science buried under the techno-shamanism. That the Iron Hands linked up so strongly with the Ad Mech has layers.

The big thing with Necron secrecy is so many big players don't share, and the Imperium's bureaucracy is basically built for lost secrets.

I guess it’s the difference between us knowing about the Ancient Egyptians, and us cracking open a Tomb and some of the buggers being still alive?

I think Trazyn had some interaction with some members of the imperium before most necrons started waking up, but he was just doing some collecting

Wasn’t the first recorded incident of necrons waking up the annihalation of a sisters of battle bastion? I seem to remember some story like that. Before that though yeah. It would be very weird if humans didn’t come into contact with necrons given that humans populated the entire galaxy 20.000 years before the great crusade. There’s some pre necron encounter lore about C’tan activity floating around. But I guess it was mostly small scale encounters.

 Nerak wrote:
Wasn’t the first recorded incident of necrons waking up the annihalation of a sisters of battle bastion? I seem to remember some story like that. Before that though yeah. It would be very weird if humans didn’t come into contact with necrons given that humans populated the entire galaxy 20.000 years before the great crusade. There’s some pre necron encounter lore about C’tan activity floating around. But I guess it was mostly small scale encounters.

That is the Battle of Sanctuary 101, which was an actual battle report at the very tail end of 2nd edition between SoB and Necrons (yes there were trial 2nd edition rules for them). The battle report was a one sided slaughter of the SoB, and made a Terminator reference with a Necron walking out of the flames of its crashed Destroyer (they were like anti-grav vehicles back then with a Necron Warrior pilot) like a naked T-800 endoskeleton.

That has now been put into the background as the first time the Imperium became aware of the Necrons being openly active again as a major faction. However that too has been further retconned a bit by having isolated groups of Necrons activate earlier but then going back to sleep, or the Imperium failing to connect the dots and presumably dismissing the Necron activity and attacks as just unexplained disappearances in a vast galaxy.

 Gert wrote:
Even then developing a weapon using Xenos tech isn't something the Imperium won't do. It's nominally against the rules but the Mechanicus and Inquisition break those rules all the time, especially for organisations like the Assassinorum.
And IIRC it was a surprise when a Callidus tried to kill a C'tan with one and the C'tan just absorbed the blade into its body. Seems to be a case of "Hey this works but we don't know where it came from".

There was a pretty good techprirst game some years back. Mechanicus I believe it was called. Good game, better music. In the have have several endings. Breaking dogma and understanding the Necrons certainly is interesting.

Iracundus wrote:

 Nerak wrote:
Wasn’t the first recorded incident of necrons waking up the annihalation of a sisters of battle bastion? I seem to remember some story like that. Before that though yeah. It would be very weird if humans didn’t come into contact with necrons given that humans populated the entire galaxy 20.000 years before the great crusade. There’s some pre necron encounter lore about C’tan activity floating around. But I guess it was mostly small scale encounters.

That is the Battle of Sanctuary 101, which was an actual battle report at the very tail end of 2nd edition between SoB and Necrons (yes there were trial 2nd edition rules for them). The battle report was a one sided slaughter of the SoB, and made a Terminator reference with a Necron walking out of the flames of its crashed Destroyer (they were like anti-grav vehicles back then with a Necron Warrior pilot) like a naked T-800 endoskeleton.

That has now been put into the background as the first time the Imperium became aware of the Necrons being openly active again as a major faction. However that too has been further retconned a bit by having isolated groups of Necrons activate earlier but then going back to sleep, or the Imperium failing to connect the dots and presumably dismissing the Necron activity and attacks as just unexplained disappearances in a vast galaxy.

I can feel a thread coming on….

Iracundus wrote:

That is the Battle of Sanctuary 101, which was an actual battle report at the very tail end of 2nd edition between SoB and Necrons (yes there were trial 2nd edition rules for them). The battle report was a one sided slaughter of the SoB

If I remember rightly though, that battle report was a 2k Necron army vs a 1k Sisters army. The sisters had to hold out as long as possible to send a distress signal or some such.


Thing is, the way 40k narrative works, there's plenty of space to fit things into the gaps. Necrons are much the same. Gw seem to have done so quite recently in some of the various books. People say "retcon" a whole lot, but from what I've seen, there's very few times GW completely roll back on something.

Consider the absurd amount of time that the Necrons are supposed to have existed in the setting, it would be weirder if they hadn't been spotted in some capacity. Probably chalked up as something else though.

What Haighus says about tombs being hidden to avoid the Eldar makes sense. The necrons are at their weakest when in dormancy.

 Olthannon wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

That is the Battle of Sanctuary 101, which was an actual battle report at the very tail end of 2nd edition between SoB and Necrons (yes there were trial 2nd edition rules for them). The battle report was a one sided slaughter of the SoB

If I remember rightly though, that battle report was a 2k Necron army vs a 1k Sisters army. The sisters had to hold out as long as possible to send a distress signal or some such.


Thing is, the way 40k narrative works, there's plenty of space to fit things into the gaps. Necrons are much the same. Gw seem to have done so quite recently in some of the various books. People say "retcon" a whole lot, but from what I've seen, there's very few times GW completely roll back on something.

Consider the absurd amount of time that the Necrons are supposed to have existed in the setting, it would be weirder if they hadn't been spotted in some capacity. Probably chalked up as something else though.

What Haighus says about tombs being hidden to avoid the Eldar makes sense. The necrons are at their weakest when in dormancy.

I don't remember the total points value but some of those 2nd edition Necron rules were broken, like for scarabs. Relatively cheap, they could attach to enemy vehicles and give a permanent decrease to armor values. Stack enough onto a vehicle and then even peashooters could penetrate and destroy it. As a result even though the Sisters objective was to hold out, they didn't last very long at all and it was a pretty sad slaughter. As I said, the one thing that stuck in my mind after all these years was that image of a lone Necron warrior walking out of the flames of its crashed Destroyer like a T-800, because the Destroyer was one of the few Necron casualties of the battle report, whereas the Sisters were wiped out. I felt sorry for the Sisters as it seemed such a propaganda battle report to sell the Necrons.

The surviving Necrons are probably those that were best hidden or most well defended. The Eldar Codex describes the Eldar empire pre-Fall easily crushing any lone isolated Necron dynasties that woke prematurely.

Iracundus wrote:
2nd edition Necron rules were broken

I'll hear nothing against T8 Sv2+ Scarabs with I'll Be Back!