riplikash wrote:They had moved on to new planets. Millions of them. They had possibly the single largest empire the galaxy has ever known, possibly tied with the Eldar.

It isn't so much that their home planet was actively killing them as that it has caused them to evolve to breed quickly and die fast.

But the war against the Old Ones wasn't REALLY about saving lives and living longer. It was an excuse to unite the fracturing Necrontyr empire. The Silent King was afraid the Necrontyr would fracture into civil war, and needed a war to unify his people.

So the REAL reason they were jealous is because their leaders used propaganda to make them jealous. What was the propaganda?

Partially that they "wouldn't share the gift of eternal life", thus making them the 'bad guys'. Secondly, the were jealous of the Old Ones because their combination of warp mastery and technology let them accomplish things (like immortality and the webway) that the Necrons could never accomplish with just technology, and due to a twist of evolutionary fate the Necrons could not tap into the warp. No matter how advanced they got or how hard they worked, it seemed they could never match up to the Old Ones, because they weren't born warp sensitive.

As for all of them becoming Necrons, they weren't actually given a choice. The codex describes how the nobility forced those who didn't want to into the Ghost Arks and transformed them against their will.

While some may have hidden and avoided the process, they would suddenly find them in a Skynet Judgement Day scenario. Their entire planet, all the military, transports, and space defenses are controlled by an army of unsleeping robots dedicated to their capture. Since they couldn't escape the world they were on they would be left to quickly die out, as it would be difficult to breed and survive in those circumstances.

Though it is possible some escaped. If that happened we don't know about them or their eventual fate.