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.

I’m not an expert on the necrons so sorry if I missed the obvious but…

The necron leaders want to revers the process that put them in their metal bodies and return to being flesh, it’s like their holy grail achievement, right?

But only the aristocracy amongst them necrons retained their consciousness and the general population became automatons and have lost all personalities etc. so they can’t go back to flesh can’t they?

So if the the necron lords go back to flesh they will be alone and die out pretty quick.

I just be missing something

Some Necrons want to become fleshy again, basically Necrontyr but without super cancer, because the agony of immortality leads to insanity. Having enough Necrontyr that they can slowly start reproducing while they rule over the lesser races would mean eventually the Necrontyr would have dominion over the Galaxy. The general theory is that they would just take "human" forms and become the new rulers of humanity, trading one ruling species for another.
Many other Necrons want to remain immortal machines, seeing the flesh as a weakness. They still want to rule the Galaxy but don't want silent, dead domains so they keep the mortal populace alive sort of like Zhandri in WHFB.
Most just want to eradicate the vermin that have infested their realm since the Great Sleep.

As Gert says, it varies. Some want to regain meat bodies because immortality and a lack of "authentic" sensation can both be pretty maddening in their own ways.

Some (Orikin) want to to transcend into an energy-based existence similar to that of the C'tan.

Some are pretty content with their metallic existence (for now), sometimes due in part to having become obsessed with something that immortality allows them to pursue.

And some of them, frankly, might not have concrete "long-term" plans. If you're discontent with the lord who has absolute authority over you, you might be focused on obtaining more freedom first and foremost. If your dynasty is in ruin and being wrecked by eldar, you're probably mostly focused on dealing with that before you make plans for the 61st millenium.

I get the impression that the Silent King might fall into that last category. He's very focused on putting out the fires that are tyranids and chaos. What he wants to do after that is unclear.

Well, if they can master bio-transference, or rather than reversal thereof? It becomes another form of immortality, as there seems nothing to stop body hopping in the future. As your current one crumbles, just punt your mind and consciousness into a new one.

Beyond that? Dominance. They want the Galaxy to themselves and always have. I suspect once they have the means to reverse Biotransference, they’ll set about exterminating the other races, then get all fleshy again.

There's a few objectives

1) The Obliteration of all other living life in the Galaxy. This is part driven by their desires of conquest and part driven by the madness of jealousy of the living.

2) The reverse of Biotransferance. This isn't as simple as it sounds because during the process they didn't just swap organic for metal bodies. During the process they lost their "souls" as well (the C'Tan ate them). So they aren't just lacking organic sensation, they are also lacking in souls.

3) The degree to which they retain individuality and memory varies a lot within the Necrons. In general many of the lower cast had lower quality bodies and this appears to go hand in hand with reduced capacity to retain memory and individuality. As a result many lower ranks of warriors and the like are basically drones now. Meanwhile higher ups can be anything from intelligent and individual through to somewhat insane to totally insane.

Meanwhile you've got the Flayed One curse and the Destroyer curse infecting them. Flayed ones who are desperate for their organic bodies again; Destroyers who are willing to hack into their metal bodies to change them to improve themselves for better killing.

Well, there’s nothing to say they want Biotransference for everyone.

And the real proof of that pudding would be if Biotransferred warriors are able to produce healthy, normal offspring.

That’s an important test, because your basic Warriors were previously just…the general population. Actual soldiers became Immortals. Everyone became Warriors.

Get them back in flesh, and mindless or not, you could still do a (utterly horrifying to my mind) breeding programme to get some normal fleshy underlings. Get three or four for every two? And you’re very much back in the game.

Wyldhunt wrote:
As Gert says, it varies. Some want to regain meat bodies because immortality and a lack of "authentic" sensation can both be pretty maddening in their own ways.

Some (Orikin) want to to transcend into an energy-based existence similar to that of the C'tan.

Some are pretty content with their metallic existence (for now), sometimes due in part to having become obsessed with something that immortality allows them to pursue.

And some of them, frankly, might not have concrete "long-term" plans. If you're discontent with the lord who has absolute authority over you, you might be focused on obtaining more freedom first and foremost. If your dynasty is in ruin and being wrecked by eldar, you're probably mostly focused on dealing with that before you make plans for the 61st millenium.

I get the impression that the Silent King might fall into that last category. He's very focused on putting out the fires that are tyranids and chaos. What he wants to do after that is unclear.

This sums things up basically. The Necrons are fractured. Not all of them want to be back under the Silent King. Others are insane or half insane and pursue goals that seem illogical. The Necron novel Twice Dead King for example has one Necron lord character spend literally centuries polishing and scrimshawing the individual histories of each of his Necron Warriors onto their bodies. While the motivation is later given in the book and is not entirely insane (in fact, it might be a method for the Necron lord to retain the rest of his sanity), it shows how Necron lords might have misplaced priorities.

Necron writing is terrible. Absolutely bad. The fact they wasted 60 million years doing nothing is the biggest one. Anyone logical would know that the eldar would blow up all their tombs one by one while they're indisposed. So why didn't they? Bad writing.

Necrons' technology was more advanced than the old ones, but they couldn't find a cure to their radiation cursed body? How can a race advance technology without advancing medical technology? It's total nonsense that a galaxy spanning race with interstellar travel would have such terrible technology that they couldn't cure radiation or obtain immortality cybernetically.

So put everything together and necrons trying to return to their bio bodies makes no sense too.

roboemperor wrote:
Necron writing is terrible. Absolutely bad. The fact they wasted 60 million years doing nothing is the biggest one. Anyone logical would know that the eldar would blow up all their tombs one by one while they're indisposed. So why didn't they? Bad writing.

Necrons' technology was more advanced than the old ones, but they couldn't find a cure to their radiation cursed body? How can a race advance technology without advancing medical technology? It's total nonsense that a galaxy spanning race with interstellar travel would have such terrible technology that they couldn't cure radiation or obtain immortality cybernetically.

So put everything together and necrons trying to return to their bio bodies makes no sense too.

I think GW has explained the Eldar as growing complacent after driving the Necrons off. The tomb worlds still had their defenses and were located on inhospitable worlds. From the perspective of the Eldar, it might have seemed like a lot of effort, potential casualties, for little gain against an enemy that seemed to be otherwise entirely dormant and not a threat. The last Eldar Codex did make mention that any isolated Necron dynasties that became tried to rise up and become active pre-Fall were stomped on by the Eldar.

It seems that GW has portrayed the Necrons as advanced in the "hard" sciences like materials science and physics but not much has been shown about Necrontyr biological sciences, which they might have been deficient in. The Necron novel Twice Dead King Ruin shows the Necrons as potentially starting to come down with cancers even in teenage years. The main character of that novel developed metastatic cancer at the age of 18. It does not seem to have been purely due to the harsh radiation from their original star as they still seemed to die young on other worlds. It seemed to be genetic, just like how some species on Earth seem to be naturally short lived. It could be that the Necrontyr were not skilled at genetic engineering, or at least not to the point of being able to significantly alter their original short natural lifespans.

The idea of a faction having uneven technology in different fields is not new. The Vilani in Traveller for example were initially more advanced than Terrans in most areas except that of medicine and biological sciences (for reasons specific to the Traveller universe).

As I recall the Necrons didn't have superior technology to the Old Ones; or at least not superior biological technology. That was one of the reasons for the war, the Old Ones refused to give them the technology so the Necrons declared war and promptly started to lose the war.

That's why they went with the C'Tan and biotransfurance because they were on the losing side. After that point they did emerge superior, but having walked all that remained of their race through the transference and been stripped of their bodies and souls , they were left lacking.

Lol it completely is. The Old Ones refused to help the Necrontyr with their super cancer baked into their DNA since the Old Ones were basically only around to watch what happened in the Galaxy. The Necrontyr started the War in Heaven and got their bricks flipped until the pact with the C'tan and even then it took them years with only a breach in the Webway giving them the advantage they needed. Shocker that roboemperor doesn't know what they're on about.

There’s also the chance that somewhere one of the original Necrontyr colony ships still survives.

If their status system survived? There could well be entirely biological specimens of the Necrontyr.

 Gert wrote:
Lol it completely is. The Old Ones refused to help the Necrontyr with their super cancer baked into their DNA since the Old Ones were basically only around to watch what happened in the Galaxy. The Necrontyr started the War in Heaven and got their bricks flipped until the pact with the C'tan and even then it took them years with only a breach in the Webway giving them the advantage they needed. Shocker that roboemperor doesn't know what they're on about.

I just had to say i've never heard the term "bricks flipped" before. I can deduce its meaning from the context tho, it's still a new term to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
There's a few objectives

1) The Obliteration of all other living life in the Galaxy. This is part driven by their desires of conquest and part driven by the madness of jealousy of the living.

2) The reverse of Biotransferance. This isn't as simple as it sounds because during the process they didn't just swap organic for metal bodies. During the process they lost their "souls" as well (the C'Tan ate them). So they aren't just lacking organic sensation, they are also lacking in souls.

3) The degree to which they retain individuality and memory varies a lot within the Necrons. In general many of the lower cast had lower quality bodies and this appears to go hand in hand with reduced capacity to retain memory and individuality. As a result many lower ranks of warriors and the like are basically drones now. Meanwhile higher ups can be anything from intelligent and individual through to somewhat insane to totally insane.

Meanwhile you've got the Flayed One curse and the Destroyer curse infecting them. Flayed ones who are desperate for their organic bodies again; Destroyers who are willing to hack into their metal bodies to change them to improve themselves for better killing.

In "severed' Obyron is bemoaning the loss of a chance to restore necron souls, and zandrekh points out to him the only reason obyron didn't betray him was not logic but emotion, and asked him what being but one with a soul can love? necrons clearly have emotions, act in ways no machine would, even the silent king said he pitied the victims of the destroyers.

So, do they have something like a soul? Sentience, emotion? Yes.

Perhaps, but don't forget Zandrekh holds feasts, invites enemies to banquets in their honour and most of the time considers his enemies (or just calls them) different houses of Necrons even if they are orks or humans or whatever.

He acts every moment as if he is alive and totally oblivious to the machine state that he's in

Spoilers!

 Overread wrote:
As I recall the Necrons didn't have superior technology to the Old Ones; or at least not superior biological technology. That was one of the reasons for the war, the Old Ones refused to give them the technology so the Necrons declared war and promptly started to lose the war.

That's why they went with the C'Tan and biotransfurance because they were on the losing side. After that point they did emerge superior, but having walked all that remained of their race through the transference and been stripped of their bodies and souls , they were left lacking.

I'm pretty sure I've read that necrons had superior non-medical technology. But even if not, there's no way a race can have galaxy wide interstellar travel without knowing how DNA works. Because that's all biological immortality is. Reprogramming DNA so that it doesn't stop after x number of reproductions.

 Overread wrote:
Perhaps, but don't forget Zandrekh holds feasts, invites enemies to banquets in their honour and most of the time considers his enemies (or just calls them) different houses of Necrons even if they are orks or humans or whatever.

He acts every moment as if he is alive and totally oblivious to the machine state that he's in

1d4chan says it's later revealed that he knows everything and is just pretending otherwise because he's eccentric. 1d4chan is NOT reliable and needs to be double checked but still, it shows there might be something out there.

edit: I misrememberd what 1d4chan said
"It's been revealed in the newest story containing him and Obyron that it's more Robo-Dementia and he is a bit eccentric. His awareness of the world around him comes and goes and he's somewhat aware of his condition and tries to make the most of it (eg; taking advantage of his condition to fool his enemies into underestimating him), which is both awesome and tragic, making for a very compelling character. "

So I guess he is delusional but he's also aware of it, but once again this is 1d4chan so it needs to be double checked.

Necrons definitely have emotions, I thought that the higher up the chain you were during the bio transference the more of your marbles you were allowed to keep, so the plebs are now just mindless drones but top dogs are basically super geniuses in terminator bodies.

I thought the drone like nature of the majority of necrons was part of the c’tan trick of bio transformation in the hope of taking control of the necron forces?????

Pretty much yeah. Those of the nobility were allowed to retain their memories and minds. Any of the lower classes or those that would not serve a military purpose (such as children) were made into Warrior classes.
The Destroyer Lord in the Indomitus tie-in specifically remembers his wife going insane because she remembered turning her children into drones and ending her life out of grief. This in turn causes the Lord to feel the same guilt and he goes insane becoming a Destroyer.

 Gert wrote:

They still want to rule the Galaxy but don't want silent, dead domains so they keep the mortal populace alive sort of like Zhandri in WHFB.
Most just want to eradicate the vermin that have infested their realm since the Great Sleep.

I believe it is in fact Numas! where desert nomads arrived in the city and started living with the dead. At least that was the case in the 6th edition army book. I think Zandri is another port city.

Having not been in warhammer for a long time and coming back to it, I really enjoy how the necrons are portrayed now. Makes them a lot more interesting having characterful villains as well as the terminator esque wee maddies.

As everyone has said I would think they're quite varied in their goals. If only the higher echelons have their thinkers then really it's up to them what happens right, they have their council? It's an interesting deal with the devil backstory, but there must be some who relish their immortality

Ah yes indeed it is Numas.