Long before humanity crawled from its cradle world, before even the eldar strode among the stars in glory, the beings called the necrontyr ruled a scatter of harsh, radiation-blasted worlds. They were a proud but dying species, their bodies withering under the light of their own sun, and their envy of the long-lived eldar curdled into a hatred that would shape the rest of their history. Desperate for permanence, the necrontyr struck a pact with the star-devouring c'tan, entities of near-godlike power that promised deliverance from death itself.
That deliverance was a lie wrapped in a gift. The necrontyr were stripped of their organic bodies and poured into immortal frames of living metal, becoming the necrons. In exchange, they became slave soldiers for their new c'tan masters, and in the millennia of war that followed, the necrons' minds and souls were eroded until only cold fragments of personality remained. Their empire crushed the nascent eldar civilization in the War in Heaven, but the cost was the near-total loss of what had once made the necrontyr people rather than machines.
The Great Sleep and the Silent King
Fearing betrayal from their own creations, the necron nobility turned upon the c'tan, shattering the star gods into fragments and binding the shards into weapons and prisons. This treachery was orchestrated in part by the Silent King, Szarekh, who then led his broken people into a self-imposed hibernation lasting more than sixty million years, hidden within tomb worlds scattered across the galaxy, waiting for a signal that never came from their king, who had fled into the void in shame.
That sleep has now ended. Across a thousand thousand worlds, tomb complexes are stirring, their dynastic overlords rising from stasis to find their once-glorious empire fallen to ruin, overrun by the very younger races the necrons once considered vermin. Some dynasties wake with clear purpose and cold, calculating patience. Others emerge with minds corroded by the ages, their personalities reduced to little more than echoes and obsessive fragments of the beings they once were.
An Empire Divided Against Itself
The necrons are not a single unified force but a fractious galaxy of independent dynasties, each ruled by its own Phaeron or overlord and each nursing its own ambitions, grudges, and doctrines of war. Some dynasties favor overwhelming firepower and technological supremacy, others prize honor and ancient ritual, and still others have embraced a savage, almost feral hunger for battle that unsettles even their own kin. This disunity is both a weakness the younger races might exploit and, perversely, a reminder of the individuality the necrontyr fought so hard to preserve.
What unites them is an unshakeable belief that the galaxy belongs to them by ancient right, and a species-wide dread of the c'tan shards that still slumber in stellar tombs, waiting to be reawakened or exploited by whichever dynasty is bold or foolish enough to try. As the tomb worlds empty and the legions of the dead march again beneath the void, the younger empires of the galaxy are only beginning to understand what it means to fight an enemy that cannot truly die, only be inconvenienced.
Units
Annihilation BargeHeavy Support · VehicleA low-slung antigravity gun-platform that drags a curtain of chain-lightning across the battlefield, immolating whole squads in a single searing arc.
Canoptek DoomstalkerHeavy Support · WalkerA towering tripod-construct that stalks the tomb-perimeter, its doomsday blaster reducing distant enemies to drifting motes of unmade matter.
Canoptek ReanimatorElites · WalkerA skeletal canoptek engine that walks among the fallen, bathing shattered warriors in reanimating light until they rise once more.
Canoptek Scarab SwarmFast Attack · SwarmClouds of self-directed metal scarabs that strip enemy vehicles and infrastructure apart while quietly maintaining the necrons' ancient machinery.
Canoptek SpyderHeavy Support · Monstrous ConstructA hulking anti-grav construct that maintains the tombs and spawns swarms of scarabs from within its own body to repair necrons or dismantle the foe.
Canoptek WraithsFast Attack · BeastSerpentine canoptek constructs that phase through solid matter, gliding through tomb corridors as tireless wardens and lethal ambushers.
Catacomb Command BargeHQ · VehicleA crescent war-throne on which an undying Overlord rides to battle, cleaving heads with a sweep of his warscythe as the craft screams overhead.
ChronomancerHQ · InfantryA cryptek who bends time itself, hastening allied warriors to a blur while enemy blows slow, falter and age to rust before they land.
DeathmarksElites · InfantryInterdimensional assassins who lurk in a pocket void between moments, marking their prey with a green halo before a single flawless killing shot.
Doom ScytheFlyer · VehicleA crescent attack craft whose amplified howl drives the living mad, scything battle lines apart with a death ray that pierces rank after rank.
Doomsday ArkHeavy Support · VehicleA hovering necron war platform mounting a single, catastrophic cannon capable of erasing armored formations in a blinding arc of energy.
Flayed OnesElites · InfantryCursed necrons driven mad by an insatiable hunger for flesh, who drape themselves in the flayed skins of their victims and slaughter with rending claws.
Characters
AnrakyrThe TravellerA wandering overlord who abandoned his own throne to roam the galaxy, waking dormant tombs and forging the scattered dynasties toward a reborn necron empire.
Illuminor SzerasThe Flesh-SculptorA necron savant obsessed with perfecting the biotransference process, endlessly experimenting to refine the very technology that made his race immortal.
Imotekh the StormlordThe StormlordThe cunning Phaeron of Sautekh, whose tactical brilliance and mastery of atmospheric weaponry have made his dynasty a dominant power among the awakened necrons.
Nemesor ZahndrekhThe Deluded ConquerorA peerless necron general whose ruined mind believes he still leads flesh-and-blood armies in ancient wars, winning victory after victory from within his delusion.
Orikan the DivinerThe DivinerThe greatest of necron astromancers, a chronomancer who walks backward through time to steer fate toward the moment of his ascension into a being of terrible light.
SzarekhThe Silent KingThe last Silent King of the necrontyr, who doomed his people to undeath and now returns from exile to reunite the dynasties against the devourer from beyond the stars.
The DeceiverThe MessengerThe trickster among the star gods, who lured the necrontyr into surrendering their souls and whose scattered shards may still walk free, scheming in the shadows.
The NightbringerThe Reaper of SoulsA shard of the star god that taught every mortal race to fear death, unleashed only in dire need as a skeletal reaper wreathed in the cold of the grave.
Subfactions
Mephrit DynastyA dynasty of master artificers and gunsmiths whose armies wield some of the most devastating annihilation weaponry in the necron arsenal.
Nephrekh DynastyThe Golden Dynasty, whose warriors dissolve into beams of living light, teleporting across the battlefield in pursuit of transcendence.
Nihilakh DynastyA dynasty of obsessive hoarders and stubborn defenders, whose overlords will wage millennia-long wars to reclaim a single stolen relic.
Novokh DynastyA dynasty consumed by a savage, ritualized bloodlust that pushes its warriors toward close, merciless slaughter.
Sautekh DynastyA militant dynasty built on conquest and ruthless strategy, famed for the storm-wreathed cunning of its greatest overlord.
Szarekhan DynastyThe royal dynasty of the Silent King himself, foremost of all necron houses, masters of blackstone and bearers of the race's supreme authority.
Discussion
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