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I would argue that eating stars for sustenance is evidence of world ending power.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
While the newer lore isn't perfect, the old lore kinda just felt like Tyranids, but metal. Another functionally mindless race out to destroy everything.

I never understood this take. Nids and Crons seem radically different. Tyranids wipe the galaxy cleam, making evrything Nid. Necrons turn the galaxy into a terrorfarm for realspace gods and seal it off from the warp.

Not to mention the fact we have 8 flavors of marine codex or whatever.

Yup, a voracious swarm of animals, a force of nature and incomprehensible lovecraftian cosmic horror. Two very different things, both very cool.

I think Oldcrons were cool, and it was cool reading the background. But I felt at the time that it was a bit of a mistake tying everything together like that.

I think the Ctaan and the War in Heaven were a mistake. The Orks and Eldar both being bioweapons developed for the War in Heaven is a bit boring and makes both races a bit less in my view. Eldar should be their own thing, and Orks being a bioweapon created by the mysterious Brain Boyz for SOMETHING in the distant past is cooler when you leave it ambiguous.

The Necrons as a concept of creepy robots that come out of nowhere and do inscrutable things while killing absolutely everything organic are cool as hell. But making them be essentially Dr Who Cybermen under control of ostensibly Lovecraftian elder gods but with sadly comprehensible personalities and motivations is not that exciting to me.

My own headcanon is that Necron warriors ARE the Men of Iron - pre-Imperial human made androids. The Ctaan are an ancient AI sentience, perhaps a biotransference or perhaps a fully artificial being. They transmit as a light speed signal and infect machine intellects and turn them to their cause. That's what caused the War Against the Machine and why there is such a taboo against AI in the 40K universe (because it's not just the humans - the Eldar and Orks also don't make use of robots (tinboyz excluded!). Tau could be explained by simply not having encountered the Ctaan much.

Canotek constructs would be constructs of older, possibly dead races that have been co-opted. I also imagine the AI to have it's own culture which explains the weird sigils and that it modifies some of the basic androids to fit this.

I just prefer this as it also helps explain why the Necrons look like human skeletons and allows for a bunch of classic Sci Fi plots. The Ctaan as a weird signal in space that no one understands is to me much more lovecraftian than giant floating men who have a very understandable motivation: hunger.

On Orks/Krorks?

Given there are millions of years between the war twixt Necrontyr and Old Ones, Orks are by no means Krorks. Anymore than Humans are still the common ancestor with Chimpanzees, or Homo Erectus etc.

We can’t even be sure that the Old Ones were the Brain Boyz.

After the Necrons went nap-nap, there’s a staggering expanse of time for plenty of stuff to have happened.

It’s entirely possible that Orks as we know them now are the result of further genetic engineering. Either by the hand of their direct ancestors, or another species for a myriad of viable reasons.

In a sense, they’re a result of STC type technological achievement. Where Man really came a cropper through over reliance on the STC? What need to educate your young when your genetics will sort it.

And so Orks could be the horrific result of a botched attempt at a Eugenics Based Self Repeating Caste System.

On the one hand, it’s seen them become far and away the single most successful species known in 40K and its history. They’re completely indomitable, with even a single Ork having the potential to sow the seeds of the entire species anew, always developing in sympathy with the needs of its population density.

On the other hand? They can never truly advance. They Are What They Are. And because of how their culture propagates itself, they can never become anything more.

 Hellebore wrote:
There was a really cool wd article that went into the legends of the war in heaven describing the things I mention. It's during that story that the fear of death concept is supposed to have occurred.


@tyran, if khorne can't one shot the universe and is still considered a god, why do the ctan need to be able to do that to be considered one? They never had world ending powers, why are you making the arguments that the would suddenly get them?

Because within the same breath you are defining the C'tan as undefeatable, which basically makes them setting breaking.

But they were more than just defeatable, they were defeated without any substantial effort or cost. Or even cleverness.

The Silent King just shoots them all with his super lasers. Because the Deceiver never considered that might happen when he gave his resentful slave command of all the super lasers. What kind of an ending is that?

It's much better when they're destroyed by the Old Ones who all die in the process. That's a dramatic conclusion to the arc, and also explains why there are no Old Ones anymore.

It’s almost as if Quite Monstrous Arrogance is an ongoing theme, to be fair.

Old Ones? Fell due to arrogance.
C’Tan? Arrogance.
Necron/Necrontyr? Arrogance
First(ish, there may have been earlier attempts) Empire of Man? Arrogance
Eldar of all stripes? So arrogant, they spawned a god
The Imperium? Arrogance.

Even every single Orky Waaaaagh! that’s ever been is a cult of personality that’s eventually fallen due to a form of Arrogance. That Da Boss is now so ‘Ard nothing can perish them. Until something perishes them. A different flavour of arrogance, sure. But arrogance is the root cause.

But it's also really stupid. It doesn't make him look like some sort of towering Ozymandias figure, it just makes him look like a buffoon.

Where are you getting this idea there was no substantial effort involved in the rebellion against the C'tan?

Millions of Necrons were destroyed and the Flayer Virus birthed by the dying act of the C'tan known funnily enough as The Flayer.

The rebellion against the C'tan was the nail in thr coffin for Necron supremacy in the galaxy and as his last act, Szarehk ordered the Great Sleep to protect what remained of his race.

The rebellion wasn't five minutes of "turn on mega laser then go to bed".

Millions of people die every week in 40k!

Newcron lore is like if the Horus Heresy ended with every traitor primarch defeated and every loyal primarch victorious, and then afterwards the Emperor feels so bad about how hard he won that he voluntarily chooses to sit on the golden throne for 10,000 years.

 Tyran wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
There was a really cool wd article that went into the legends of the war in heaven describing the things I mention. It's during that story that the fear of death concept is supposed to have occurred.


@tyran, if khorne can't one shot the universe and is still considered a god, why do the ctan need to be able to do that to be considered one? They never had world ending powers, why are you making the arguments that the would suddenly get them?

Because within the same breath you are defining the C'tan as undefeatable, which basically makes them setting breaking.

The necrons should not have had the power to defeat them. Your argument is Khorne is setting breaking because he can't be defeated. It's two separate things. Simply consider the c'tan equivalents of chaos gods, with manifestations that appear to fight their enemies. Like chaos gods.

If 40k isn't broken by 4 chaos gods, it can't be broken by 4 other chaos gods.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
Where are you getting this idea there was no substantial effort involved in the rebellion against the C'tan?

Millions of Necrons were destroyed and the Flayer Virus birthed by the dying act of the C'tan known funnily enough as The Flayer.

The rebellion against the C'tan was the nail in thr coffin for Necron supremacy in the galaxy and as his last act, Szarehk ordered the Great Sleep to protect what remained of his race.

The rebellion wasn't five minutes of "turn on mega laser then go to bed".

They still possess all the technology they used to defeat the ctan and that pesky star deleter button. Which is technology they should never have had. They had unknown trillions of necrons, losing a billion is nothing. The rebellion of the necrons was a milder civil war. The imperium got destroyed by their civil war, all their infrastructure smashed. The necrons still have their tomb worlds and infrastructure. There is nothing in the background that suggests breaking the ctan into slave shards and using them to fight other ctan in any way damaged their civilisation in the way that say The HH or the eldar Fall did to their respective cultures.

The necrons didn't lose their knowledge, their technology or their planets and infrastructure. They just got tired and the king felt sad about it all. It's all self imposed, there is no structural limitation applied due to destruction.

All their mancers are still capable of creating tech, they still have all their knowledge. They have unlimited ctan shard batteries to do whatever they want with. What parts of this look like a broken empire? They also slept for 60 million years again for self imposed reasons. They could have slept for 10 million years and woke with less decay and more capacity to fight the eldar.



As I said earlier, self imposed limits are not narratively effective. There's no weight to their limits, no threat or damage. It's just 'I'm sad and don't want to'. The eldar would have unleashed their unstoppable robot armies if they still had them to get their empire back. But they can't. The imperium would be deploying all their DAoT wargear in the 41st millennium if it wasn't all destroyed and lost during the HH. These are hard limits and disadvantages.

No faction in 40k should lack limits like they do. The peasant warriors aren't the technomancers, their deaths don't diminish the technical capabilities of the necrons. Canoptek robots can be built to replace them.

Millions die from races that can reproduce and replenish. The only thing the Necrons can make is Canoptek constructs.

There are enough Tomb Worlds out there as The Plot requires but ultimately a war where millions of troops get wiped out and five whole Dynasties with some of the most powerful technology available to the race fall to ruin is a big deal.
The Great Sleep wasn't "wah lots of us died and I'm sad about it", it was a necessity in a galaxy becoming abundant with races that wanted payback on a severely weakened Necron race.
And if you're knocking the idea that 60 million years was too long a time to wait for the Great Awakening, you do realise the Aeldari Empire lasted those 60 million years right up until the end and would have been in a prime position to retaliate against awakening Tomb Worlds? Now all that remains is webway scavengers and a few Craftworlds with nowhere near the might to challenge their oldest enemy.
Orks are an irritant, humanity is meat for the gristle.

Yes there are super weapons out there like the Celestial Orrery (which everyone agrees is a bad idea to use as a weapon) but then the Imperium has the capacity to make readily available hand grenades that tear holes in space and time and Chaos worshippers just need to say some magic words to drag entire planets into literal hell.

Personally I think they explained too much in the "newcron" lore.
If you look at the way Necrons are portrayed within Dead Men Walking (one of the best instances of Necron portrayal imo!), they are this strange and unknowable alien menace.
The author lets us speculate on why the Necron overlord transmits unintelligible speeches, were the Necrons really targeting the power stations, why did they exterminate some humans and let others live etc.

By giving us too many answers about who the Necrons are, what they want and how they do things, they kind of come across as goofy nowadays! Not sure how you put that genie back in the bottle though.

Saying that I haven't personally read a Necron codex since 5th edition, the internet does have a habit of translating codex statements like "some Imperial guy thinks that this is how most Necrons work" to gospel truth!

 Hellebore wrote:

The necrons should not have had the power to defeat them. Your argument is Khorne is setting breaking because he can't be defeated. It's two separate things. Simply consider the c'tan equivalents of chaos gods, with manifestations that appear to fight their enemies. Like chaos gods.

If 40k isn't broken by 4 chaos gods, it can't be broken by 4 other chaos gods.

The Chaos Gods are not undefeatable. We just had the Emperor burn down a part of Nurgle's garden in Godblight and Slaanesh got thrown into horny jail in AoS.

I’m like the newer Necron lore over the older.
Definitely from a “Build your army” perspective, since you can have characters.

 Tyran wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

The necrons should not have had the power to defeat them. Your argument is Khorne is setting breaking because he can't be defeated. It's two separate things. Simply consider the c'tan equivalents of chaos gods, with manifestations that appear to fight their enemies. Like chaos gods.

If 40k isn't broken by 4 chaos gods, it can't be broken by 4 other chaos gods.

The Chaos Gods are not undefeatable. We just had the Emperor burn down a part of Nurgle's garden in Godblight and Slaanesh got thrown into horny jail in AoS.

AoS isn't 40k and your argument that burning the garden of nurgle defeats nurgle means that anytime you kill a nurgling you've defeated nurgle because they're all parts of him. You're using the definition of 'beating in a fight' as defeat, which in that case the c'tan were getting beaten in fights in the OLD lore - Khaine beat the most powerful Nightbringer at the height of its power and the emperor beat the void dragon.

Nurgle's influence on the galaxy remained unchanged after his garden was damaged, his daemons still fight, his followers still get blessings. The great game has the chaos gods damaging one another more often than the emperor ever has. They are perpetually in a fight, tearing at each other. But while the galaxy has emotions, they can't be defeated. ie, the only way to defeat permanently chaos gods is starvation, which is the same way a c'tan can be defeated and were in the oldcron lore which is one of the main reasons they went to sleep.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I’m like the newer Necron lore over the older.
Definitely from a “Build your army” perspective, since you can have characters.

Totally onboard with the cultural design and expansion of the newcrons, but that could have been added to oldcrons without any retconns at all. It would have appeared simply as expansion of their background, removing the veil of mystery around their culture. They didn't need to change how the c'tan relate to them or the power of their technology to tell everyone how their noble hierarchy works.

 Hellebore wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I’m like the newer Necron lore over the older.
Definitely from a “Build your army” perspective, since you can have characters.

Totally onboard with the cultural design and expansion of the newcrons, but that could have been added to oldcrons without any retconns at all. It would have appeared simply as expansion of their background, removing the veil of mystery around their culture. They didn't need to change how the c'tan relate to them or the power of their technology to tell everyone how their noble hierarchy works.

Indeed. Xenology, which came out firmly in the OldCrons era

"Realspace gods" is one of the dumbest ideas ever introduced to the setting, up there with the Abnettverse stuff you dislike and the uncut late 90's edgelordism of the Dark Eldar "deriving sustenance from pain."

Semi-related, every description of Necrons doing math so hard it comes out as magic is incredibly stupid and hilarious. It feels like GW wanted a hard sci-fi faction without having a hard sci-fi writer.

Also, addressing something in OP’s first post which I think could be a false equivalence*. Specifically that it would diminish Khorne and the other Chaos Gods if you could shatter them.

On that, we know it is possible to shatter a God. The defeat of Kaela Mensha Khaine at the hands of Slaanesh demonstrates that, forcing what remained of Khaine’s being to be tethered to the Avatars.

And if it happened once? It could happen again. But where the Warp Gods and C’Tan fundamentally differ is that the C’Tan are children of Real Space.

Unfathomably powerful, yes. But still born of Real Space, and so subject to its laws. The Warp Gods however aren’t. So whilst it’s clearly possible to ‘kill’ a God (re, rest of the Eldar Pantheon, though it’s arguable they were subsumed into Slaanesh), it seems to only be capable at the hands (or claws, appendages, pseudopods) of another Warp Entity, and so entirely beyond the capability of any species of Real Space.

That’s my Chinny Reckons anyway. I can’t support it beyond anecdotes, but at least said anecdotes come from canonical background. Which might make them Observations.

And I think that’s why the Necrons are busy building the Pariah Network. Not so much to starve the Chaos Gods (we don’t know and can’t assume they don’t have sources of worship in other Galaxies after all), but to Shut And Lock The Pantry From The Inside. A way to stop them influencing, interfering and interacting with Real Space.

*I’m certainly not saying it was a deliberate one, either.

Can the Tyranids eat a C'tan?

Do we have evidence of Tyranids consuming Pure Energy?

Because, necrodermis aside? That’s how C’Tan are described.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Do we have evidence of Tyranids consuming Pure Energy?

Because, necrodermis aside? That’s how C’Tan are described.

If they can eat daemons...

 Altruizine wrote:
"Realspace gods" is one of the dumbest ideas ever introduced to the setting, up there with the Abnettverse stuff you dislike and the uncut late 90's edgelordism of the Dark Eldar "deriving sustenance from pain."

Semi-related, every description of Necrons doing math so hard it comes out as magic is incredibly stupid and hilarious. It feels like GW wanted a hard sci-fi faction without having a hard sci-fi writer.

I don't think "realspace gods" is a bad way of describing the C'Tan, as long as the "god" aspect is considered metaphorical. My interpretation of the texts is that the C'tan are fundamentally creatures based on in-universe physics (which are somewhat magical compared to real physics, because space opera), rather than warp physics. Similarly to the Necron, they are just using principles so advanced that it seems magical. The place where this breaks down, however, is in why the C'tan would be interested in Necron souls, which were presumably warp entities, unless souls also have some kind of physical presence that can be exploited as a fuel source. Computation-as-magic is also a pretty classic sci-fi trope, so I don't mind that. I really don't think GW ever wanted hard sci-fi - at most they wanted the veneer of hard (like in the Xeelee Sequence), but an actual hard sci-fi faction simply would not work. The first dealbreaker would be the lack of FTL.

To be fair hard sci-fi isn't truly "hard". Even the likes of the Expanse blatantly break physics (and have some serious math errors) if you get down to analyse how it is supposed to work.

Like anything else in fiction, hard sci-fi is about the veneer, themes and aesthetics, to look plausible even though it is just as magical as FTL or warp powers.

 sigkill wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
"Realspace gods" is one of the dumbest ideas ever introduced to the setting, up there with the Abnettverse stuff you dislike and the uncut late 90's edgelordism of the Dark Eldar "deriving sustenance from pain."

Semi-related, every description of Necrons doing math so hard it comes out as magic is incredibly stupid and hilarious. It feels like GW wanted a hard sci-fi faction without having a hard sci-fi writer.

I don't think "realspace gods" is a bad way of describing the C'Tan, as long as the "god" aspect is considered metaphorical. My interpretation of the texts is that the C'tan are fundamentally creatures based on in-universe physics (which are somewhat magical compared to real physics, because space opera), rather than warp physics. Similarly to the Necron, they are just using principles so advanced that it seems magical. The place where this breaks down, however, is in why the C'tan would be interested in Necron souls, which were presumably warp entities, unless souls also have some kind of physical presence that can be exploited as a fuel source. Computation-as-magic is also a pretty classic sci-fi trope, so I don't mind that. I really don't think GW ever wanted hard sci-fi - at most they wanted the veneer of hard (like in the Xeelee Sequence), but an actual hard sci-fi faction simply would not work. The first dealbreaker would be the lack of FTL.

The C’Tan didn’t consume the souls, but something else which isn’t well defined. The souls went into the warp, where daemons devoured them. And it may very well be that lack of soul and Undefined Other which is preventing the reversal of biotransference. Like trying to a put a consciousness into a body with no lungs or heart.

Whatever that "life force" that the C'tan ate might be, it's gotta be some potent stuff if it is more energetic than literally consuming stars.

I don't think it's ever described as giving them more energy, just that it happens to be (for lack of a better term) tastier.

Like sure a granola bar or a banana will give you energy and sustenance, but it's nowhere near as good as a steak with whisky sauce.

Its also far less time consuming to eat a million tiny morsels than it is one massive one.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also, addressing something in OP’s first post which I think could be a false equivalence*. Specifically that it would diminish Khorne and the other Chaos Gods if you could shatter them.

On that, we know it is possible to shatter a God. The defeat of Kaela Mensha Khaine at the hands of Slaanesh demonstrates that, forcing what remained of Khaine’s being to be tethered to the Avatars.

And if it happened once? It could happen again. But where the Warp Gods and C’Tan fundamentally differ is that the C’Tan are children of Real Space.

Unfathomably powerful, yes. But still born of Real Space, and so subject to its laws. The Warp Gods however aren’t. So whilst it’s clearly possible to ‘kill’ a God (re, rest of the Eldar Pantheon, though it’s arguable they were subsumed into Slaanesh), it seems to only be capable at the hands (or claws, appendages, pseudopods) of another Warp Entity, and so entirely beyond the capability of any species of Real Space.

That’s my Chinny Reckons anyway. I can’t support it beyond anecdotes, but at least said anecdotes come from canonical background. Which might make them Observations.

And I think that’s why the Necrons are busy building the Pariah Network. Not so much to starve the Chaos Gods (we don’t know and can’t assume they don’t have sources of worship in other Galaxies after all), but to Shut And Lock The Pantry From The Inside. A way to stop them influencing, interfering and interacting with Real Space.

*I’m certainly not saying it was a deliberate one, either.

No faction should shatter a god, hence my example of the world eaters breaking khorne. The c'tan ate each other originally, I never had a problem with that. Gods smashing each other is very different to fanficing your pet faction to have magic god smashing powers for no reason other than cool.

The chaos gods are absolutely subject to realspace laws, because they only exist due to the evolution of sentience and emotion in reality. Without life in realspace, the warp's reflection is just rocks and gas. They rely ENTIRELY on realspace to exist, just as the c'tan do.


As for the life force the c'tan ate, it was never depicted as anything other than an addictive food they wanted and desired. Sentient brain energy being unfathomably addictive like space hi fructose corn syrup. Which is logically consistent within the setting. Having realspace entities now eating souls has NO logical consistency, souls are of the warp and the c'tan are the opposite of the warp. It would be like saying humans eat anti matter for fun.

I know some folks still prefer the old-school Necron background—the cold, soulless killing machines puppeteered by the C’tan—but I actually enjoy both iterations and think there’s room for them to coexist narratively.

It’s easy to imagine that early Necron constructs might’ve been damaged during biotransference or simply woke early from the Great Sleep, still under full control of their star-god masters. Over time, conflicts (maybe between different dynasties or even against the C’tan themselves) could’ve fractured that control. That evolution—from automaton to semi-sentient, bitter, and nuanced—is deeply tragic and gives the faction emotional weight. Some of the newer lore explores that beautifully with characters like Trazyn and Orikan.

I'd like to believe that maybe GW didn’t retcon the lore so much as zoom out to reveal more of it. Instead of robots turning into philosophers overnight, it could be that the ancient Necron civilization was always complex—we just weren’t shown those layers until later.

I'd love to see more stories exploring that transitional period: the unrest within tomb worlds, the dynasties that resisted the C’tan earlier, and the cost of reclaiming autonomy. I won't say the initial Necron lore was boring - but I'm happy GW decided to expand and not leave it as mysterious as it was initially.

I absolutely have no problem with the cultural and personality developments of the newcrons.

This isn't a debate over whether zombie robots vs egyptian robots is better.

It's that the c'tan shouldn't have been inexplicably defeated and turned into pokemon, or that the necrons mysteriously have galaxy ending power just cuz in order to justify it.


You can apply everything about newcrons to the oldcrons and only change a few things:

they didn't defeat the c'tan, the c'tan defeated each other.

The 'freecrons' that aren't controlled by a c'tan, because they were lost, or their c'tan was killed, are trying to recreate what they lost. They can't deploy c'tan, but they have a rebellious freedom that the necrons enslaved by the c'tan don't have.

But at no point should the silent king be more powerful than the c'tan, nor should the faction have pokeballs of c'tan or technology to end the galaxy.

The difference is about power balance, not about personality.

They didn't need to retcon the c'tan in order to give the necrons personality and IMO the technology required to do that retcon and the subsequent uber power that necrons now have does far more harm to the power balance in the setting than the faction being subservient to the c'tan.

AS I've said innumerable times, no one would accept the chaos gods being enslaved by the chaos marines that 'worship' them and the power they would need to have to do that disrupts the setting far too much. The same is true of the c'tan and the necrons.

The only reason this is even a topic is because the necrons happened to be getting their redesign during the Ward days where OTT uber comic styling was the order of the day. No other faction was given the glow up the necrons got and the setting suffers for it. It throws out the powerscale entirely, and leaves the narratively cheap and unfulfilling 'the necrons could win but choose not to' as the only balance against them, rather than a meaningful challenge from the other factions.