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I play Necrons, and in my gaming group I play mainly against other xenos races, Tau and Tyranids to be precise.

I am considering dressing up some of my Flayed Ones in skin from those races, since they are the ones I fight the most.

In books I've read Flayed Ones are always depicted as carving up human bodies and draping themselves in their skin.

But would if they kill other races, would they grab their skin too or would they strictly prefer human skin? It's perhaps the race that most resembles the old Necrontyr and as such it would make sense I guess.

But a given Flayed One would probably fight most of his battles near his own tomb world, against whatever enemies are there. And if that happened to be for example in an Ork controlled sector, then green skin is all he is likely to come across for forseable future. So logically that's what he should put on as there is no likely alternative.

Unless he goes shopping for clothes so to speak in an empire controlled part of the galaxy once in a while.

It's a game built by humans. So we tend to put our common skin tones into the skin that robo-monsters are going to wear. For example, I tend to paint my minis with Caucasian skin, because that's what I think of when I worry about someone skinning me and wearing me like a pair of footy-pajamas. They'd wear my skin.

But if I was an Ork, and I was worried about my own skin, I probably wouldn't be an ork. And as a Tau, I'd probably be cool with losing my skin if it were for the greater good, right? Tyranids probably have some kind of acid blood or something that would corrode the Flayed one. Eldar skin's all thin and frail and would probably disintegrate in the rigors of flaying... so pragmatically speaking, if you're trying to scare something while wearing it's skin, Hummie is the way to go.

Pick the pigment of your choice, but good ole Hummie skin is what I'd want to wear, if I were an insane robot.

Sure dressing up in slain foes' skin is decent psychological warfare, but part of their background, the effects of the illness that is the flayer virus, is that they try to trace their lives back to their former skinned selves, before their robotic incarnation. If I understand correctly.

The flayed ones in the Cave of Ice Ciaphas Cain novel skin an ambull and are also seen wearing Ork skins so it looks like they're not overly fussy (at least in Sandy Mitchell's mind)!

Yeah from my understanding of it they're not exactly picky. They're psychotic insane undead robots from 60,000,000 years ago that desperately try to reclaim their flesh and blood bodies by draping them in the skin of the living.

Strikes me that they'd probably just adorn themselves with whatever's to hand (which given your gaming group represents the forces your dudes are fighting, would be mostly blue-skin and green-skin). You could be nice and cruel and start off with human skin and then steadily repaint it with blue or green as and when they eviscerate your mates' squads...

Oh, also, Flayed Ones are bonkers. If you want one that prefers Green Skin for quite literally no reason whatsoever then go nuts it's what they've done

phillv85 wrote:
The flayed ones in the Cave of Ice Ciaphas Cain novel skin an ambull and are also seen wearing Ork skins so it looks like they're not overly fussy (at least in Sandy Mitchell's mind)!

Caves of Ice (2004) was written before the 5E Necron codex (2011), so the Cain novels work on Oldcron lore.

From what I’ve read they just want anything they can get. It’s an insatiable desire and they aren’t picky.

DarkSoldier wrote:

phillv85 wrote:
The flayed ones in the Cave of Ice Ciaphas Cain novel skin an ambull and are also seen wearing Ork skins so it looks like they're not overly fussy (at least in Sandy Mitchell's mind)!

Caves of Ice (2004) was written before the 5E Necron codex (2011), so the Cain novels work on Oldcron lore.

Care to expand on that? Not trying to be a tool, just genuinely interested how the lore has changed.

DarkSoldier wrote:

phillv85 wrote:
The flayed ones in the Cave of Ice Ciaphas Cain novel skin an ambull and are also seen wearing Ork skins so it looks like they're not overly fussy (at least in Sandy Mitchell's mind)!

Caves of Ice (2004) was written before the 5E Necron codex (2011), so the Cain novels work on Oldcron lore.

If the 5th ed. Codex somehow invalidated everything which came before*, why would you even mention the 5th ed. book since the 7th ed. Codex should logically have invalidated it (and all other intervening background!) in turn?


*Spoiler: that line of argument becomes incredibly illogical incredibly quickly.

5th ed. Necron codex was a large-scale rewrite of their fluff, and each subsequent codex built on the 5th ed. one. So they're right to point out whether the novel was in the Oldcron or Newcron era.

However, having thought about it I don't believe the changes in Flayed One fluff would affect the question we're actually asking.

Oldcron: Flayed Ones are mental from being awake for the whole of their 60-million year slumber (much better IMHO).

Newcron: Flayed Ones are mental from some kind of virus.

Either way, they're mental so unlikely to have any sort of pre-determined preference other than what you choose for their bonkers little minds

Unless any of the fluffs specifically says they crave human skin, it shoudn't matter much. besides.. they're bonkers

If they were awake for 60 mill years, they probably only encountenred humans for the last <0.1% of that time. So would be awkward to have an affinity for their skin developed during that short glimpse.

If they suffer from a virus, then it would be equally strange if that virus, created way before there were humans, should program them to crave that beige two-legged draping.

Are their sources saying what the Necrontyr looked like, if they largely resembled humans then that might indicate a preference.

torblind wrote:
Unless any of the fluffs specifically says they crave human skin, it shoudn't matter much. besides.. they're bonkers

If they were awake for 60 mill years, they probably only encountenred humans for the last <0.1% of that time. So would be awkward to have an affinity for their skin developed during that short glimpse.

If they suffer from a virus, then it would be equally strange if that virus, created way before there were humans, should program them to crave that beige two-legged draping.

Are their sources saying what the Necrontyr looked like, if they largely resembled humans then that might indicate a preference.

It would be especially weird if the virus predisposed them towards human skin seeing as when the virus was created hominids wouldn't have evolved for another 54 million years...

There aren't any existing fluff sources of what Necrontyr looked like, but we can infer things from their robotic bodies which we can safely assume resembled them at least slightly in the same way that any android for us tends to look human. I've put a reasonable amount of thought into this, so here goes

We can tell from their basic body shape that they were humanoid. Two arms, two legs, separate head. We can also tell that their proportions were probably slightly different than ours, with longer and lankier legs and arms. It's likely that their heads were also a little more hunched over than ours, although it's possible that it's a stylisation to indicate lower classes of bodies like Warriors rather than higher-class Lords and suchlike. Likewise it's tricky to say that the skull-shape of Necrons directly mirrors the Necrontyr as it's likely that their metal bodies sport stylised versions (although it could indicate that their skulls were slightly taller and drawn out than ours with jaws elongated downwards). It's also tricky to gauge true size as if you're going to make a robotic body for yourself, you're probably going to make it pretty big and impressive. So I'd expect Necrontyr to actually be slightly smaller in stature than Necrons (probably putting them at roughly eldar or human height).

One of the interesting things is the spinal tails and crests that higher class Necrons sport. It's possible that Necrontyr had tails, although there are definitely other explanations given that low-tier Necrons don't. Potentially they had tails, but lower class Necrontyr had them docked as a sign of inferiority. Potentially there were sub-species, with the tailed Necrontyr as an upper class. Potentially they never had tails at all, and elongation of the spine (both above and below) was a cultural sign of the upper class (which also works if they had tails too).

Absolutely no indication of skin-colour, hair/no hair, scales or other surface detail though. So vaguely humanoid, but probably no more or less visually similar to us than orks or eldar.

Great catch with the tails.

Praetorians models (Necron security forces or MP) have tails! And they look real, not something welded on for show.

Lords and overlords don't.

The praetorians also have something weird on their back, which might be ornamental, or related to their jump/fly capabilities.

Crypteks have tails too.

Now even if these tails were put there for show or as a cultural status symbol, it at least reflects on their idea of a tail and the tail can't be too far back in their evolution, since they have spines after all.

torblind wrote:
Great catch with the tails.

Praetorians models (Necron security forces or MP) have tails! And they look real, not something welded on for show.

Lords and overlords don't.

The praetorians also have something weird on their back, which might be ornamental, or related to their jump/fly capabilities.

Crypteks have tails too.

Now even if these tails were put there for show or as a cultural status symbol, it at least reflects on their idea of a tail and the tail can't be too far back in their evolution, since they have spines after all.

I like your thinking

Perhaps tails (biological or ornamental) denoted an upper-class, but still servile to the true royalty (tending to have elongated spines upwards). Middle-class really. Your architects and elite soldiers. Above the rabble, but still not the true people in power.

phillv85 wrote:

DarkSoldier wrote:

phillv85 wrote:
The flayed ones in the Cave of Ice Ciaphas Cain novel skin an ambull and are also seen wearing Ork skins so it looks like they're not overly fussy (at least in Sandy Mitchell's mind)!

Caves of Ice (2004) was written before the 5E Necron codex (2011), so the Cain novels work on Oldcron lore.

Care to expand on that? Not trying to be a tool, just genuinely interested how the lore has changed.

Oldcron: Flayed Ones, despite being only semi-autonomous, are driven insane by the desire to be living once more. They wear the skin/flesh of other creatures to try to sate this craving, which is used to terrifying effect in such novels as Hellforged (Meh novel overall, generally good depiction of Necrons).



Newcron: Flayed Ones are zombies created by a virus dealing with the usual insatiable desire for flesh. Oh, and they're robots. Robot Zombies. Think I saw a B horror film from the 80's with that premise.

Nice one, I wasn't aware of the previous lore.