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.

We know that the Eldar and Necrons are ancient enemies since the time of the War in Heaven. Has this enmity been alluded to in the fluff since the Necrons have started reawakening? By which I mean an enmity that goes beyond supremacist beliefs and is almost personal. Like "Oh sh**, here we go again!" from the Eldar, and "Are you kidding me, those a**holes are still around!" from the Necrons.

My perception is that both races currently have much bigger fish to fry than rekindling an ancient war. The Eldar realize that the reemergence of the Necrons is a problem, but they already have their hands full with more immediate threats (like the Great Enemy, the Imperium and the Tyranids), and I would bet that few if any of them happen to live on tomb worlds anyway, so they're not on the front lines of this new war. Whereas the Necrons, still bleary-eyed from their long sleep, are focused on reestablishing their foothold in a galaxy now dominated by these strange new "humans" and beset by Chaos.

I also think that if there is any enmity nowadays, it may be a bit one-sided. For the Eldar, the War in Heaven is ancient history. For the Necrons, it happened just before they went to sleep.

.

Yup.

There’s a Craftworld, I forget which, that goes to pains to disrupt unawakened Tomb Worlds. So the Eldar are still very much gunning for the Necrons.

I'd say the eldar are so stuck in their past glories and stuff they probably never quite got over it in a way.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yup.

There’s a Craftworld, I forget which, that goes to pains to disrupt unawakened Tomb Worlds. So the Eldar are still very much gunning for the Necrons.

I think that was in one of CS Goto's novels.

I mean the Necrons waged a galaxy spanning genocide war against all living beings.

Its one of those things you might hold a grudge about.

 Gert wrote:
I mean the Necrons waged a galaxy spanning genocide war against all living beings.

Its one of those things you might hold a grudge about.

But they almost fixed the chaos problem... they aren't totally bad....

From a certain point of view

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yup.

There’s a Craftworld, I forget which, that goes to pains to disrupt unawakened Tomb Worlds. So the Eldar are still very much gunning for the Necrons.

It's Alaitoc, one of the biggest Eldar Craftworlds. They still have a crystal map that is the most complete map the Eldar still have of the Necrons' tombworlds. The Harlequin Masque of the Dreaming Shadow is also focused on eliminating Necrons or anybody that is on the verge of awakening them.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
But they almost fixed the chaos problem... they aren't totally bad....

From a certain point of view

The War in Heaven caused the Chaos problem. The Warp was a calm and easily navigatable place before the Necrons started wiping out entire psychically active species causing a massive imbalance of emotion and soulstuff to pollute the Sea of Souls.
The Enslavers were spawn from the War in Heaven and caused untold destruction to the races of the material plane before largely retreating back into the Warp.

Strictly speaking? The Old Ones did that, as they were the ones running around creating psychically active vassal (slave?) species to do the fighting for them, and it was their desires and suffering that mucked up the balance of the Warp.

Which leads me on to my favourite pondering - why didn’t The Old Ones help the ancient Necrontyr?

I mean, it doesn’t seem they were asking for immortality. Just longer lives. Though of course, when you’re jealous of a species we’re told were functionally immortal, because your guys had comparatively shorter life spans, one has to ask just how short lived the Necrontyr actually were.

For instance? A human can expect to live to 70 or so quite comfortably, especially in the Western world (though of course there are variations). An adult Mayfly lives for a day. Lovely idiot slobbery doggos, sadly only around a decade (depending on breed).

Eldar we’re told live for centuries, if not millennia (Eldrad is 10,000+, as he was already a well established Farseer during the Great Crusade), so well in excess of us regular smelly hoomans.

So the Necrontyr could’ve lived for centuries, and still have had reason to be jealous of the Old Ones.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Strictly speaking? The Old Ones did that, as they were the ones running around creating psychically active vassal (slave?) species to do the fighting for them, and it was their desires and suffering that mucked up the balance of the Warp.

Which leads me on to my favourite pondering - why didn’t The Old Ones help the ancient Necrontyr?

I mean, it doesn’t seem they were asking for immortality. Just longer lives. Though of course, when you’re jealous of a species we’re told were functionally immortal, because your guys had comparatively shorter life spans, one has to ask just how short lived the Necrontyr actually were.

For instance? A human can expect to live to 70 or so quite comfortably, especially in the Western world (though of course there are variations). An adult Mayfly lives for a day. Lovely idiot slobbery doggos, sadly only around a decade (depending on breed).

Eldar we’re told live for centuries, if not millennia (Eldrad is 10,000+, as he was already a well established Farseer during the Great Crusade), so well in excess of us regular smelly hoomans.

So the Necrontyr could’ve lived for centuries, and still have had reason to be jealous of the Old Ones.

In the Necron novel series The Twice-Dead King it's revealed that the Necrontyr didn't live very long at all, and could start developing fatal cancers as early as their 20's. The main character's memories of being a Necrontyr teenager/young adult revealed he did a daily check of his body as part of his morning routine to check for any tumors and he felt a throat/neck tumor shortly before bio-transference was decided upon. Though there were Necrontyr that treated the cancers, "oncomancers", they only delayed the inevitable a little bit longer.

One has to question how such a short lived species then develops hypertechnology because it seems one would have hardly any time to learn stuff let alone develop new technology before dying.

One possible answer to that is existing Imperial technology, used to give Vatborn Goliaths the knowledge necessary to do their assigned task, data slugs uploaded into their brain.

If Necrontyr physically and mentally matured swiftly, then such a technology could be used to grant them a full education in however long the upload might take.

And I can see that as a desirable technology for any species.

Consider where humanity was at the start of the 20th Century in terms of technology, and where we are now.

We’ve gone from discovering how to achieve powered flight, to the ISS and landing remotes on Mars and passing comets, and from the Telegraph and early Telephones, to the Internet and video meetings, allowing for not just instant vocal communication, but the transfer of vast amounts of data, enabling ever greater scientific advancement via cooperation and that.

Now, let’s say in the next century we develop a reliable “instant upload “ of at least basic education (three R’s and that). How much would that benefit humanity? For every single human to get at least a Primary education in minutes, rather than years? Nobody left illiterate or innumerate?

And for those who wish to continue their education, to have High School and early College/University education straight off the bat?

I don’t think we’d ever get to the “plug this in, and boom, you now know everything science knows”, as frankly I don’t think our brains could handle that. But to give the basics and then a bit more? What an advantage that would be.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Strictly speaking? The Old Ones did that, as they were the ones running around creating psychically active vassal (slave?) species to do the fighting for them, and it was their desires and suffering that mucked up the balance of the Warp.

No I'm pretty sure it was the massive amounts of genocide that did it. The Necrontyr weren't innocent, and the Triarch started the first war against the Old Ones to stop a civil war from growing out of control using the hatred of the Old One's "immortality" as the rallying cry for the Necrontyr dynasties to unite.

Which leads me on to my favourite pondering - why didn’t The Old Ones help the ancient Necrontyr?

Because giving a warmongering race a cure for their genetic instability is not a long-term solution to a problem.

 Gert wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Strictly speaking? The Old Ones did that, as they were the ones running around creating psychically active vassal (slave?) species to do the fighting for them, and it was their desires and suffering that mucked up the balance of the Warp.

No I'm pretty sure it was the massive amounts of genocide that did it. The Necrontyr weren't innocent, and the Triarch started the first war against the Old Ones to stop a civil war from growing out of control using the hatred of the Old One's "immortality" as the rallying cry for the Necrontyr dynasties to unite.

Yes the old unite them against an external foe in order to maintain one's rule. Of course, having achieved unity the Silent King then throws it away and is now trying to reclaim it the old fashioned way.

Which leads me on to my favourite pondering - why didn’t The Old Ones help the ancient Necrontyr?

Because giving a warmongering race a cure for their genetic instability is not a long-term solution to a problem.

Seeing as the Necrontyr had an interstellar empire that colonised many worlds and the children born generations later still had the same short lifespans and aggressive cancers as their ancestors, I believe there was no real salvation for the Necrontyr.

Besides, giving the Necrontyr any cure to their genetic instability would have allowed them to expand and conquer what could generally be described as a largely peaceful galaxy nurtured by the Old Ones.
Its like letting someone join your Minecraft server who then just blows up everyone's bases because "that's my kind of fun".

 Gert wrote:

Its like letting someone join your Minecraft server who then just blows up everyone's bases because "that's my kind of fun".

Thus, they created Orks.

(I know they were a little different)

I mean not really no.

It's heavily hinted that the Krork and Ork races are at least related if not the latter being the descendant of the former but it has never been confirmed.

My analogy is there to explain why you don't give a despotic warmongering race the ability to fix the one flaw that stops them from conquering large swathes of the galaxy.
You don't let someone into the club who is just going to smash all your stuff to pieces, the club being the wider galaxy beyond the Halo Stars.

 Gert wrote:
I mean not really no.

It's heavily hinted that the Krork and Ork races are at least related if not the latter being the descendant of the former but it has never been confirmed.

My analogy is there to explain why you don't give a despotic warmongering race the ability to fix the one flaw that stops them from conquering large swathes of the galaxy.
You don't let someone into the club who is just going to smash all your stuff to pieces, the club being the wider galaxy beyond the Halo Stars.

Ok. That makes sense.

The issues with the necrontyr sound more like genetic bottlenecking than purely cancers.

Evolution would have selected heavily for better immune systems to make the species more resistant, or they just would have died out.

inbreeding is a real challenge for the genetic health of a species. A classic island example is the pygmy mammoths of wrangel island, that had such a small gene pool that they started deteriorating.

They had faulty genes involved in neurological development, male fertility, insulin signalling and sense of smell (they likely couldn't smell the flowers they were eating).

Environmental pressures though are highly selective so they shouldn't have been that vulnerable to the star's radiation for that many generations.

Or could the Necrons have a particular weakness or blindspot when it comes to the biological sciences?


An example from another fictional universe would be the Vilani from the Traveller universe. The Vilani were basically humans or hominids that were taken by an alien race from Earth and settled on an alien planet. When the alien race subsequently destroyed themselves in civil war, the future Vilani were left on their own and regressed to a Stone Age level. They were on a world where the alien life and proteins were largely incompatible with humans and so there were only a few foods they could safely eat and most foods required some form of processing before being safe to eat. The upside was most of the alien bacteria and viruses were also incompatible with humans and so the Vilani never had much problem with infectious diseases. However this led to a stunting of their development of biological sciences and medicine, which left them vulnerable to human diseases when much later the Vilani made contact with Terrans.

 Hellebore wrote:
The issues with the necrontyr sound more like genetic bottlenecking than purely cancers.

Evolution would have selected heavily for better immune systems to make the species more resistant, or they just would have died out.

inbreeding is a real challenge for the genetic health of a species. A classic island example is the pygmy mammoths of wrangel island, that had such a small gene pool that they started deteriorating.

They had faulty genes involved in neurological development, male fertility, insulin signalling and sense of smell (they likely couldn't smell the flowers they were eating).

Environmental pressures though are highly selective so they shouldn't have been that vulnerable to the star's radiation for that many generations.

Short lifespans and dying of cancer in 20's isn't going to incur a selection pressure if the Necrontyr are able to breed within that timeframe. Rats, mice, gerbils etc frequently die of cancer within 1-4 years of life, but last I checked rats are not struggling because they can have multiple litters in that time.

Sure if they're breeding before they die. But this species is wracked with cancer and somehow builds a super advanced civilisation AND manages to raise children before dying?..

The cancer thing had never been particularly convincing for me given the limitations and supposed sophistication of the civilisation.

And also that it kept happening when the environmental causes were absent on colony worlds. That's have picked up on that pretty fast. And given the high pressure of mortality is a bit much to believe they still weren't good at medicine by this point. It was pretty much the only science that could help them


I reckon it was a great conspiracy by the ctan literally haunting them into desperation, following then from world to world, irradiating them and manoeuvring them into a vulnerable position.... :p

I reckon it was a room full of GW writing staff frantically trying to work out a superficially plausible reason as to why the Necrontyr would want to undertake a one-way civilisation-wide transformation from flesh to metal. Also the room may have been a cupboard, full of one person.

 Flinty wrote:
I reckon it was a room full of GW writing staff frantically trying to work out a superficially plausible reason as to why the Necrontyr would want to undertake a one-way civilisation-wide transformation from flesh to metal. Also the room may have been a cupboard, full of one person.

Very true.

Especially given that even without sophisticated medicine, as soon as they are away from the cause, they could have solved it with a ruthless eugenics program of controlled breeding to artificially select longevity. Without a constant environmental source, they'd be more stable and easily selectable

 Hellebore wrote:
Sure if they're breeding before they die. But this species is wracked with cancer and somehow builds a super advanced civilisation AND manages to raise children before dying?..

The cancer thing had never been particularly convincing for me given the limitations and supposed sophistication of the civilisation.

And also that it kept happening when the environmental causes were absent on colony worlds. That's have picked up on that pretty fast. And given the high pressure of mortality is a bit much to believe they still weren't good at medicine by this point. It was pretty much the only science that could help them


I reckon it was a great conspiracy by the ctan literally haunting them into desperation, following then from world to world, irradiating them and manoeuvring them into a vulnerable position.... :p

I agree that cancer is a bad choice given their level of technology. It seems odd they wouldn't be able to manage cancer for a long time given that is something humanity is achieving for many cancers today.

I do like the idea they were being essentially poisoned by someone, such as the C'tan.

To be honest, I'm surprised they just didn't go a similar route as humans in 40k. Most Necrontyr die in their 20's or 30's due to senescence (hard limit of cells regardless of disease), the elite have access to rejuvenat that can sustain them for a few centuries... but that feels like nothing when seeing the impossibly ancient Old Ones and they grow jealous regardless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I reckon it was a room full of GW writing staff frantically trying to work out a superficially plausible reason as to why the Necrontyr would want to undertake a one-way civilisation-wide transformation from flesh to metal. Also the room may have been a cupboard, full of one person.

Very true.

Especially given that even without sophisticated medicine, as soon as they are away from the cause, they could have solved it with a ruthless eugenics program of controlled breeding to artificially select longevity. Without a constant environmental source, they'd be more stable and easily selectable

That probably would cause the genetic bottleneck though...

There is probably a better way to explain it, but the narrative arc is clearly "resentment occurred over the arbitrariness of the universe, their power brokers sought more power in a faustian bargain, things went how you expect".

It's not terribly satisfying, but I expect it's just out of universe writing/production constraints that led to "short life" being the lever the then-writers used.

I'll go easy on that and just pretend that their motivation are partly not understandable to us as these were already wretched xenos