The 40k Lorecast - Episode 30 - Necrons pt 1

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

 On this episode we begin our deep dive into the lore of the Necrons. Starting back at the dawn of the galaxy and the rise of the Necrontyr. Followed with a very deep dive into their part and experiences in the war in heaven(s). We will then conclude with them entering a very long nap while the Silent King goes on a galactic walk about.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Me, John Barsodi and Brad Chester. This guy. On today's episode, we'll be diving back into the necrons for a full discussion of their lore and how they... Can you edit that in time? Hmm?

Can you edit that in there? What? Huey Lewis back in time. I want to go back in time. No, we're not going to do that? No, we're not going to do any... That makes me sad. Fine.

If you're going to be like that and hurt my feelings, we can, I guess, talk about necrons. Yeah, it wasn't good music. Anyway. Oh, you just... the new. is going to haunt you all right oh no so a one hit wonder is going to go to complain about me so many hits name four is this love uh is that only you going to go back in time i know so many more

but i can't think of what's up i had because you just called me out there yeah i may edit all that out anyway you're like you named four i'm editing all right i'll just win as always please like and subscribe to the podcast. If you enjoy it, leave us a positive review. If you don't enjoy it, come on to our Discord or our Facebook and let me know what I did wrong and we will fix it. Also, a side note, just for me and for Brad, too, we actually can see like all of the statistics on our listeners. And I've noticed that a lot of you are listening to us on an Xbox. And I'm barely a millennial and Brad's not. And we both didn't know, we didn't know you could even do this. The best part is John is semi-obsessed with this thing.

Because he didn't know even how you could do it. That's what I'm getting it. Is this an app or are you actually plugging in your Xbox listening to us? Either way, if you're one of these people, just let me know how, because it makes it easier. If you're in our Discord, you'll realize I do this a lot with technology where people have to tell me how to run the Discord. I do like the fact that your first inclination was to ask me how it worked.

Yeah, I was hoping. And I went, I don't even know where I am right now. Yeah. So again, if you're one of the people listening to us on Xbox, just let us know how. That's all. I appreciate it. On that note, join our Discord. The link is in the show notes.

We also have a website called a 40KLORCast.com. And there's even a Patreon if you want to support us on making the audio or whatever it is sound better. If you give us some money, we will buy new microphones and editing software things that we've talked about kind of a lot. And then both of us go, we don't want to buy that thing unless we had money. Make it easier. All right. But on the topic at hand, the Necrons. So on episode 10, we cover them a little bit with the war in heaven.

But today, we're going to do a much deeper dive eye into them, right up to the point where they take a very, very long map. It's a solid map. 65 millionaires, but. Yeah, Rip Van Winkle. I will admit, I stopped playing 40K for a long period of time. I actually rejoined it in eighth edition, mostly because the toxicity level dropped enough that it made the game approachable. Seven of this was a trash fire. Yeah, invisible wolves.

Don't get me started. Be rollable, two up and vulnerable with the feel no pain. Yeah, good call GW. And dumping wounds on trash that you have with you? Yeah, what an incredible addition. Anyway, when I came back in, my first army was Necrons. And the reason was Dawn of War. I loved that game so much.

And the Necrons and Darn of War were really fun because you would just castle up, build, build, then go end somebody. I mean, monoliths are a real thing. Yeah, I just endless warriors. as I wrote the notes for this, I began looking at the cost of building a Neckron army. Also, stop selling stuff, everyone. Yes. Yeah, I did.

I sold my Necrons. I sold them about five years ago. I sold my Ultramarines, too, and that one I don't regret, mostly because owning a space marine collection is just too large. There's never, you can never have enough models. Your models will always come back into style. in the rules, you will always regret not having your stuff.

The only downside is anyone who has Necron Army knows I'm about to refer to. I had, I think, 18, rates of the 18, two of them still had both of their claws. Oh, the original race were awful. Those things just all broke off. But anyway, into the topic at hand. So we'll start with, for those who are new

the game, who are the necrons? They're a race of sentient-ish robots. They're basically T-800 Terminators. That's exactly what they are. How about this? If you're a noble, you have a cool, sentient T-800-slash-liquid-metal-lid-body, depending on who you are. Yep.

And if you're not a noble, you are in a nightmare world of half-souled, sentience that you can't control all the time. time. It is a nightmare. The Necrons came in in 1998 was their first reference. They got their codex in 2002, which is still third edition, which I do like that. It's 2002. It's now 2024, and we're on 10th edition. Things have sped up. They joined it in third edition. They were the fourth Zenos race added. So you had Eldar and Orcs and Tyrannids were obviously before them. Tyrannids enter the game even before that, the Space Hulk, but that's a side note. joined the game in a wildly limited format.

Right. Initially. And then expanded massively. It was just warriors, immortals, and lords. And then they were part of the period in GW that actually really is probably one of the better parts of GW, maybe the best part, where we had them, Tao, Drew Kari, Blood Angels, Darking. I think Dark Angels might have been second.

But they all started coming in all at this time. This is back when I was more just following the game as a lore standpoint. All these guys got added. and it was a great addition to the game. Really, it was also the first time that we started to see the grim dark element enter the game. So this was, Neckrons entered 40K at a really good inflection point that made the game a lot better. The narrative got a lot better at this stage. It was really big because they kept offering these new races.

They kept offering what was going on. And they changed, they didn't change the narrative. They just expanded on the narrative. Yeah. Because the grim dark was everywhere as war. It is not hopeless, but basically they are still Imperium-centric, and all of these things were happening, and this is why there's only war. Again, in the grim darkness of the future, there is only war, and there is only war because there is so many factions, one, necrons were arising at this point in time, and they came into the game. we've always been here

and they're trying to re-conquer the galaxy. True. My point about the grim dark is more up to this point. It was kind of like 80s hair metal game that kind of existed up until this part and then they got third edition game got good.

At my point, at my point is the first and second edition. The wonky, everybody's going to say second edition stuff, but like the rules were so wonky. And the IP of the game drastically changed, but I think for the better.

I agree with you. Yeah. It really was for the better. This is also what gave us games like Dawn of War. The game, believe, dates around six or sevens. A few years later, but my point is that we started seeing the first, like, foyer into other pieces, mostly because of the Starcraft catastrophe, that if you guys aren't aware of, you can figure that one out pretty quick.

Oops. Anyway, back to the Necrons. So what they are is they are the most advanced race in the galaxy. It's not even close. It's jokingly. They're, you know, what they have is. Well, they're the non-psychic race. I think they're, besides the top, they're the...

They don't count. Yeah, but I'm saying. I love the you have to get a dig in at every... Well, we might have not had one last episode. Yeah, when we were talking about Aramon. You have to edit that in. You're like, also I hate Tao. Just why a different cadence and everything else.

If you listen to the Aramon one and you go re-listen to it, and there's a random, just like, different, the sound and everything, It was me going, tau suck, why just dump that in there? Fair enough. And I want to talk about this in the necrons, because the necrons are so wildly ahead in technology and they're not a psychic race, but they're so technologically superior that one, they obviously can reconstruct all of their guys. But the biggest thing is that they can interact with the warp and warp entities with technology, not with psychics.

They also have just weaponry that's psychotic. Doomsday cannons, Tesla. I mean, Goss itself. Goss is incredible. Yeah, I mean, it disintegrates you. Yeah. It's, although which is injuring, because Goss technically is just using Magnus to shoot something. But GW gets to write however they want to write.

I'm just saying that Goss and theirs basically just rubs you until you don't exist. Yeah. Just going with what it really is. So they're massively, everybody else. Admec would lose their minds if they got a hold of Neckron technology. and have tried a number of times. And the thing is, is that Necrons have galaxy-wide teleportation. Yep.

They can bring almost anything back. Mm-hmm. As long as they have a piece of it, they can reanimate pretty much anything. In the game, it's good. In the stories, it's bonkers. To be fair, that's why we're doing lore casts. The truth is, if you play 40K and you know the lore, you actually get annoyed at almost your entire army, usually. Of any army.

Yeah, because it's like, why doesn't it do this? But then you realize you hated if everyone's armies that what they're supposed to do. So things get rolled back. But neck runs effectively never die. You have to disintegrate them or just destroy them so much that there's no energy left and they can't reanimate. But other than that, they always react.

We're going to get into the dynasties and stuff like that. But one of the main reasons, you're like, hey, if they're so wildly better at technology, why are they not auto-winning? They're pretty separate. Yeah, we're going to get into kind of, well, they also lost a lot during their long time. I mean, there's also, well, destroyer cults and stuff like that. They also went, hey man, we've had 65 million years and we're robots.

Whoopsy, sometimes the code goes bad. Right. Exactly. And being maintained by scarabs and spiders. One of the big things that has always been centralized about the Necrons is necrons effectively can never be destroyed because they teleport automatically back, and this is at a nanotechnology

level. I know nano is what you use in sci-fi when you don't have an answer to something. But as long as there's a piece of a necrown, it is brought back to their factories, which effectively are their giant space-faring

buildings, aka monoliths and things of nature, that are just forge factories that just teleport these things back, So Johnny died in the field and you just bring Johnny back and you just kind of reprint Johnny. Well, and it's quick too. They teleport back to the, you know, usually it's a monolith or something to that level, get rebuilt, then teleport back to the battle.

Exactly. Necrons are really cool. The necrons are coming up. But let's dive into where the necrons come from. Originally. And so for those of you who don't know, we write show notes for this. And when you're writing show notes, typing out Necron tier over and over and over again, really starts to annoy you.

Microsoft Word had a lot of opinions about what I was trying to type here. Anyway, the Necron's originally called the Necron Tier. They were just a race of humanoids. They never explained exactly what they look like, to be honest with you. No. One of the biggest things, I love that you put the far side and guess got mad about it. But they are on the far side of the galaxy, which John wrote a bunch of shit about. And it says, how the hell are you on the far side?

Yeah, what is a far side of a galaxy? It's infinite space in three dimensions. But yeah, of course, you're on the far side of the galaxy because it's just easier than... One of the biggest thing is, is that their home world, even though they're expanding out everywhere, the base DNA of a necronteer says you're going to die. Yeah.

Because their home world is irradiated. And we talk about irradiated, I mean, like, to the DNA of your... Even though they took over multiple planets, the base DNA of necrows is you will die from effectively radiation poisoning. Because there was so mutated. The world that they started on was just under this sun that was not. Well, they were like two feet away from the sun. Yeah.

And it was giving off radiation. So their base, their base DNA is corrupted. They lived very much. And they took over multiple systems. Well, that was their thing. Their focus on this was, you know, we're going to, we can't be here anymore. So they became what's the sad part,

all the stories in GW writing are tragic. The true tragedy of the Necron tier is that they were a very heavy science race. Their goal originally was just to survive. But that's how you lead on science, though. They were a race focused, fanatically focused on how do I not die, which is a real. thing to focus on because you're effectively saying my family, my descendants, my everyone, everyone has a death sentence.

They were 440K a short-lived race because of, again, DNA, my base, my base, core of my being says you're going to die. You can move to a different planet, but everything about how your makeup is says you're going to die. And that second part's the big part there, is that they did. They successfully left their home planet, began colonizing space, but this core poison inside of their DNA, it stayed with them.

And they kept dying. And they didn't know how to fix it, even with their superior technological basis. So one of the other key piece of the Necron tier is how they were structured. It was, they were effectively made up by different families that they would call dynasties. This is super loose in the families because they became huge. Yeah, the families were.

The dynasties were system-reaching, like, gigantic, powerful. Yeah. The way that they would organize, though, I actually thought this is kind of cool. They were organizing what's called a tri-arc, and the tri-arch was three people would govern the entire, you know, clever guys. But what I liked about it was that, you know, there was more than three families. So every time someone died, a tri-arch, one of the members of the tri-arck died, that they would be replaced by someone from a different family.

So since they all were short-lived, every family, every dynasty got representation within the triarch. Now, they called these people Therons because they were the kings. At this stage, I'm going to go ahead and admit. I like movie Stargate. I thought it was a really cool movie. Stargate SG-1, I thought, was a good TV show until I was older and re-watched it and realized I was wrong.

You're going to make people angry. It's a fun watch. It's a fun watch, but, ooh, anyway, this, the necrons are 100% based on Egypt. Oh, 1,000%. Everything about their, the monoliths, the way that they look, the way that they're named. Yeah. And they've done there with multiples. I mean, they did it all the time.

This is their one where they're going, okay, these guys are going, I mean, originally space wolves were Vikings. that did change in some retconning, but originally they were Vikings. This one, they're Egyptians. Now, those of you like me who like the show Ancient Aliens, unfortunately, there is no reference to GW,

the Necron's built on the pyramids. They totally did. And if you don't know the show Ancient Aliens, give it a watch. It is a fantastic show with departures and jumps and logic that will blow your mind. But anyway,

The head of the triarch, though, is a very important figure, the silent king. So the triarch is made of three people. Only two of them speak to the subjects. The silent king is the actual head. And the silent king always speaks. He does make the decision. He makes the decision. But everything comes through the two triarchs.

That's the next. By arcs? The thinking of it is nice, though, because he's supposed to, the whole point of it is he's supposed, to not be swayed by the public. And he's supposed to be this untaintable leader that you can't purchase. You can't buy. He can't be positioned out. He can't be lobbied.

It's actually, it's an extremely cool setup that they had. And from a, let's give you a job blocker. This is actually, this is pretty interesting. So the silent king, though, at the same time, though, was effectively the monarch. So even though, the kid couldn't be, couldn't be. lobbied or these things, and there were two other rulers with him, the silent king made the final decision. Because he could line on a veto anything. Yeah. So he was also the key ruler. So it's a weird little... Hopefully everybody knows what that means, but continue on. Also, sorry for everybody that's

listening, not in America, because that only makes sense in American politics. Oh, crap, a lot of our listeners are actually not American. Yeah, sorry, guys. It means that one person can stop everything from going for the vast majority of you are England, or actually, it's America's number one, then England and Australia. And so, you know, you know, My bad. Also, our thing's not working so well, so whatever. It's fine, exactly. Eventually, as Necrantier are expanding to the galaxy, they're not expanding in a benevolent fashion.

The downside of the Necrontier is they're trying to survive. They're also bad guys. They're really bad. They have no cares. They're effectively the mob. Oh, they're genociding anyone. Anybody and everybody. Every race, because they view...

They don't negotiate with anyone, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Just zero times. The Necron tier just would show up a planet. There'd be things living there and they'd go, okay, well, we'll just kill all of them. Yeah. The thing is, is they didn't negotiate at all. I'm not talking one time.

They didn't speak. Yeah, they just killed everyone. And just went, hey, nice planet, punk, go get your own. Because they viewed everyone as beneath them. This doesn't change, by the way, as they get older. That being said, they weren't alone in the galaxy. There was another race that had been there a little bit before them. actually a lot of them before them.

Yeah, called the old ones. And the old ones had been doing the opposite. They've been spreading throughout the galaxy, uplifting races and finding things. And making races. Yeah, and making races. And they saw the necrons and were just like, well, these guys are monsters.

You know, let's give the thing. This has been retconned multiple times. But the original thing was, why did the war in heaven take place? and I'm going to give the necrons, they're due, because even though they were crazily violent, the reason they go after the old ones is because they go to the old ones

who had mastery of all things, I guess physical, you could say? They weren't tech, but they could cure, they could manipulate anything. They could have actually changed the necron tears DNA because they were masters of psyche powers, but they are also master creators, manipulators of literally DNA code.

Now, there's my first one. So, but they were, two, three, who cares. But they were, and they went to the old ones and went, you are the actual masters of life, basically. Biology, you can change anything. We cannot fix the fact that we are a dying race,

no matter what we've done technology-wise, our code is we are a short-lived race. And the old ones, even though they were looked at as benevolent, effectively said, you guys are crazy people. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. They weren't, we look at it at benevolent. I think the old ones were correct.

The old ones realized pretty quickly that if they'd given these powers to the necrons, the necrons were not going to suddenly become poets. They were going to be immortal, tyrannical rules. as opposed to short-lived tyrannical rules. The only thing holding the Necrons in check was there, or the one thing Holden the Necron tier in check was their short lifespans. So the old ones said no. What happens, though, is the Necron tier didn't quite realize what the old ones were at this stage.

One of the challenges obviously the Necron tier have with their short lifespans is it's, as they've expanded out, Brad was alluded to earlier, these dynasties are massive, and they begin a little bit of infighting. Well, it's purpose. It's the same reason why we've had massive empires in humanity fall. Alexander the Drate dies, and then immediately everything's gone. Genghis Khan, not as much, but still, separated. You have these giant leaders that fall.

Well, we have galaxy spanning. you know, hundreds, thousands of systems of necronteer, but the problem is, is because they're short-lived, we're doing this, and then Ted the Great dies, and that's no longer the

purpose. Eric, the not great takes over. Exactly. And it starts to struggle a little bit. What ends up, this becomes a big issue because the Necronterer are being to fight internally. Wild internally. Yeah, it's right to fall apart. The Silent King, at this point realizes that the best thing for them is to go after the old ones because it gives him two

things. One, if, yeah, it's that I can unify all of my people behind killing the old ones. And two, when we are successful, wasn't if when we are successful, we will have the secrets to immortality and then we can actually conquer the galaxy. And his argument for this was then our greatest leaders will be our greatest leaders forever. Right. Two things that he did not know. One, the old ones had webways. Two, they had the warp, which they didn't know existed. Right. So they're about to fight an enemy who can move around the galaxy in a way that they didn't conceive of and can use a weapon that they don't even, actually else they can't conceive of. Necrons went, the Necron tier went hard. They attacked the old ones hard. You know what? You say hard, but that is such a nothing compared to what,

happens in the future, but go ahead. Well, they went after him hard and almost instantly get their asses kicked. I mean, it was not just ass kicked is mad that you compared them to the beginning of this war. The old ones beat them 150 to nothing in any game you want to choose. It doesn't matter. It was brutal. I mean, they, they, there was playing sick, like, we're going to be this game now. It is, they get crushed because they don't even know what they're fighting against.

You're like, hey, I just invaded. And you're like, I'm going to have my magic users attack. You're like, you're what? Yeah, what's magic? And also I'm going to appear behind you because there's webways on planets. You're on. I'm going to be here behind you 15 systems over and just attack maybe your home world. And you didn't know that existed.

The Necron, they don't only give dates on this, but effectively the Necron tier in attacking the old ones lost millennia of conquest. Yep. And the old ones kind of had a little insult to injury, pushed them all the way back to their original system with the irradiated star and just shoved them there. And then just bailed. Yeah, which is not the best move. It was a bad decision because the Necronterre showed up with a level of hatred and determination that no one has ever seen before. Yeah, the Necron Tier did not like this loss. So we'll from there move into what happens next. And unfortunately, this

has been, we're talking about C-TANs. The biggest thing with the Catan is, they make it sound occasionally like this is like something that happened, two seconds. The Necrotterre find out the Catan exists. The Kid of Star Gods.

Well, okay, so let's go to the, there's about three different ways it happens. And I have to give GW credit here because a lot of them go to GW retcon something, they just retcon it and call it a day. What GW has done is they've now said none of this was retcon. It's all true. It is all occurred before written history. Right. So therefore, all we have are stories from the Eldar, who are then told it by the old ones. So that's why we get different stories. Exactly. So all of them are true and none of them are true.

Exactly. And actually, I kind of like that, to be honest with you. Yeah, this is a good one. I, I crap on GW writing a lot. This is this is good writing. writing in a clover move. So it took them a long time to even know they existed. Well, of course, because they existed for all of time. Right. And the thing is, is that, by the way, is it C-Tan or Catan? I don't know.

All right, cool. I'll probably miss. I'll skip over. So if you guys don't know which one it is, oh, do we? Whatever. So the biggest thing about that is when they saw them, they found out they existed, there's a huge amount of time that goes through when they try to communicate with them. It took them, they took the next.

They take the Necron's tier just forever. Forever. To even have these beings acknowledge their existence. Let's start with what C-Tan is. So they are maybe the first being in existence in the galaxy. They are just beings of pure energy that eat stars. That's what they do. They feed off energy.

That the necronteer discovered one and immediately thought, thought this is a being of pure power. Let's make it be our friend. Right. And they take a lot, we're talking thousands of years, actually. There's not, this isn't like, hey, man, we've, we found a Catan and Billy found a way to talk to him. No.

Generations upon generations of Necronterre tried to figure out how. And the thing was, it wasn't even originally just communicate with. It was make them know that we're even here. Yeah. Then we'll work on that. The first story is the, it's kind of the original codex type story, which is they know, the Necron tier noticed an anomaly in their star. And they shot, they fired a bunch of probes into it.

And they discovered there was something in the star eating their star. There's that one. The, the next one is from actually the Eldar, which is the incredible amount of hate, that the necronteer had toward the old ones got the attention of a C-Tan because they could feel the energy of hate going there. First, C-Tan to make contact is a C-Tan named Methetron.

God, this is going to be a rough episode. Ah, Mepetron. You know what? What does it translate to? The Deceiver. You probably shouldn't make a deal with a guy whose name is the deceiver. Now he gets to be a thing.

the deceiver after this. To be fair, his name was always the deceiver. They just didn't realize what Mephetron met. So you met someone, his name was Eric. And he went, nice to meet you, Eric. And he doesn't realize Eric's thing is, is, you know, dog eater. And you have a bunch of dogs in your house. Like, it's not a great combo.

But the first challenge the Necron's have with the C-Tans is we've made contact. They've made contact. But I actually need to have a way to actually interact with you. Because the Necrotan originally don't have any bodies. No, there's energy. They're just energy. So they needed a way, we want you to wreck our enemies, and we also need to communicate and talk to you.

So we made necrodermis. And you effectively put energy inside it, and this was such a, it was effectively unobtanium. Well, it just absorbed any amount of energy. Like anything you put energy. put into it, it reverberated it back. So they were able to exist in this as pure energy. Living metal. Yeah, to say, this is where the term living metal comes from. And it not only did it give this the Catan a form, but it also alerted them to a new form of energy to feast on.

With no souls existed. Yeah, now that they're interacting with living beings, souls exist. So I have to ask the question. I was writing my thinking it's like later on we're getting into this so whatever. I can spoil it now. They want to eat the souls living. I'm trying to think, is it just

Slenesh that does that? I don't think any other chaos God consumes souls, right? Kind of, yeah. Corn doesn't. Corners. I mean, and Sleche only eats the souls of the elder. Elder. So, anyway, Ketan, there we go. Potential early chaos god.

We'll be right back after a quick break. And the deceiver, holy crap, wildly deceives. Let's have a lot. Let's pronounce it. Mephetron. I'm zero chance to do. Just throwing that out there.

So, yeah, Mepetron knew the history of the Necronterre pretty well and decided to manipulate them. So when they meet with him, he tells them about how, well, they actually also, the C-Tan also fought the old ones. And they were terrible to us, too. They're mean to us and they defeated us. And all we want to do is live in harmony in the galaxy. And maybe if you could just help us out, we could together stop the great blight on the galaxy that is the old ones.

And I believe the note I put here was strong Emperor Palpatine vibes coming on right here. I mean, they did get the worst of the deal with the deceiver. Yeah, it doesn't go great. Yeah. So, I mean, this is effectively the death of the Necronterre, but continue. The most important one, though, is out of all this, Mephton tells Necron tier that he does know a way. It's a double. No, I'm saying it's twofold.

He says, one, you will be immortal. Yep. Two, we will win against the old ones. Exactly. And they are legend pissed at the old ones. At the old ones. the deceit that being said you know what i'll throw this out for all you obscure readers they are talonah moss oh upset ager all right we're going with erics and stephen ericson on that we're going

with it that being said when the deceiver promises you something through the fine print there is about two billion pages of fine print so the deceiver did have every intention of megas the necrone tier would never die that was a hundred there's a little bit of a catch though there's a there's a Well, just because of the fact that also his deal is so shitty. He doesn't just want to eat the souls. He wants to nibble, basically, on the souls and leave a little bit left over. So I don't know, maybe you can live an eternity of hellish nightmare. Yeah.

Of being semi-sentient in a piece of robot that you can't control, but you can't control some of the time, but not all the time. Yeah, the lore does. So in this next bit here, we're going to do, the lore gets a little bit dicey because they're not that specific in how this stuff works. But effectively, after taking the corporal form, the Cetans decide that they would actually rather consume the souls of the living than of stars, which I'm assuming is just a flavor thing that may because. Yeah, they were like, this is barbecue.

It's all they're going with it. They never explain it at all, but it's very clear that somehow all of the Cetans decide we should eat these. What I got from this, though, is that the deceiver just went, we should just be dicks and were kind of already. I felt that the Khatam were just terrible in the first place, and they just did this to be more terrible. I have no sympathy, by the way, for what's going to happen to Katan. Oh, none of us do.

I mean, none of us have, well, actually, no one in this story I have sympathy for. They're all horrible. But the Satan explained to the Necron Tier that they can help them by the same way that the Necranter helped the Satan. Because the Satan were transferred into these necrodermis, And they say, well, we can actually help all of you do the same thing. You could transfer your souls and your bodies into these necrodermis, and you would be just like us. But this is a shitty legend deal.

This is why the Silent King is always going to be kind of a big dick. The Silent King actually debates on this for a while within his court because the problem is effectively his two, he's being offered his two greatest dreams, immortality and to destroy the old ones. but he's having to convert his entire species into mechanoids. It's always semi-known that there is a bad taste. There's something wrong with this deal. Yeah, he knows it. This is in multiple stories. It's not 100%, but he knows for sure that.

Something's off. Yeah, exactly. Maybe not me, but multiple, my people will pay. How about this? Yeah, someone's not to pay. And there's actually one dissenter, and I don't know why I put this in here, but it's because I had a Necron army. It was Oricon the Diviner, who had a really cool model for a while. So also got amazing stories.

Yeah, and then got legended. Great book, by the way. Yeah. So Oricon the Diviner is, he kind of sees the future for the Necrons and says, if you do this. Which is why also he's so cool. He doesn't have psychic powers. He divines the future by looking at science. He predicts the future by going,

I've run two billion models of the future, and this is what's going to happen. The problem is that the Silent King just can't resist this offer. It's grossly too great. Because remember, they are dying right now. They're back on their home planet, and the species is dying out.

Well, they also took, again, a huge loss. They wanted this thing. They didn't get this thing. and they also had their empire not just beat back, shattered, just shattered. And this begins something that's called as a great transference, where they built factories all over the planets where they constructed new bodies for the Necronterre. Which is their new model, which is the models you're using today.

Which is what we know of in the mess. And the Neckranter is lined up outside to walk into the factory. Interestingly, though, above each factory, there were C-Tans who were, flying above, that's what they described, they were flying above the factories. Enabling the biotransference. Well, that's what they were doing. They were helping out because it's really important to us to help out.

By taking a bite out of each cookie that went in the box. Exactly. What was actually happening, though, in these transferences is the souls were being taken out of the neck. That's the worst part. It wasn't the whole soul. Well, no, it took the whole soul out. And then the necron, the C-Tan got a piece of it. And the body got another piece of it.

So you have. I'm saying they took a bite. It would be better if they just ate the whole soul. But they didn't. They left these people with a fraction. You're not even half the man. You're depending on what you are. You were a different portion of it.

And so at this transference, the silent king even goes through his one. And once he comes out the other side, he realizes what has just happened. I do want to dive in this a little bit, though, because this is something. I played Necron's for a while. We've talked about them in depth with friends at nauseam. This bit is a little bit complicated because depending on how you read the story, they were soulless autonomitons

or they were sold automatons. And it's this weird thing where effectively the lower classes, which would be your Necron Warriors, were soulless automatons. Pretty much. But your overlords, your cryptex, your immortals to a point. Well, the Catans still want to win.

Oh, yeah. The Catans have this. So it's set up in a weird way where in the book, they just refer to it as the stronger members were able to maintain a portion of their soul. But a lot of the commoners were just, you know. That's the thing is I don't even think it was just strong. I think it was the people in charge because they still needed someone to lead their armies to victory.

Also, this is a big deal. The Silent King knows right away. and the Silent King immediately starts plotting. Oh, yeah. From moment zero. From that moment zero, yeah. I'm getting my revenge. That being said, though, it's not all bad.

They're not wrong, by the way. Of course. They are immortal. They are immortal. They are immortal. And also, they're not just immortal. Immortal is one thing. It's one thing to be like,

because we think about human being about perpetual, right? The thing is killing a neck run is hard too. So they're immortal. They're in bodies that can resist most weaponry. Well, they also can reanimate pretty much almost anything. Yep. They're stronger than they've ever been.

So the Necrons went from a broken, dying race to, all right, now a somewhat soloist automaton. This is a big deal because this is a, probably the biggest mistake that Catan made, which was, yes,

we took a bite out of all your people. You're probably going to be mad about it, but here's control. over all your people. Whoopsie. This might come back to haunture. The Khitan did not have control. Only the silent king had control

over the entire populace of the Necronter. So that's mildly important because the Necronter just went from a dying race to now the greatest warrior race in the galaxy. And I can say that.

But I'm saying that because the quirk haven't been invented yet. True story. But at this stage, they stop being the necrone tier. And they've fully become the necrons. Yeah. And it is the foreshadowing on this one is, one, Silent King has knowledge of what he just got screwed over.

Two, he has full function on this. One other thing is we should point out that a lot of the lords of the necrons, now the necrons, are pretty okay with this. Oh yeah. For the most part, the population's okay, because there's something going, yeah, I lost my soul. Well, it's the population. It's the people in charge. Honestly, it's everybody because this is incredible power.

I mean, they just got their asses kicked. Brutely. And now they are, they're effectively invincible and they're partnered with the most powerful species in the galaxy. Because the C-Tan and this whole thing get powered up to. way like Goku level. I mean, it's Dragon Ball Z kind of thing. They just ate trillions more, probably, actually, of souls. And they are brimming with energy that they just want to crush everything with.

And they've never had that much power. And they are now ready to make war on the old ones. And they come out the gate and start wrecking shop. The old ones just don't have a prayer into this. I mean, we did cover this. We covered this. Yeah, I mean, it was like 19 episodes ago, but just effectively quick hitters are old ones start losing.

They convert the Eldar from poets to war. I was saying convert the poets to warriors. Create the Cork, create the Jochero. Don't worry, we're doing a cast on them. And that actually starts to stabilize the war. At this stage, that all those combos, the war is becoming a bit more of a back and forth. The old ones are no longer losing.

But the old ones themselves are getting killed. Well, that's what happens next. because the problem is the necrons realize that they can't beat the old ones unless they can shut down the old ones powers, which is the warp and the webway. And the first thing they do is they actually break into the webway with something called a Dolman Gate. The Dolman Gate's important, probably more for our second cast as one, but Dolman Gates still exist in 40K. Dolman Gates are the only way to access the webway if you're not a cyker. This is also how they realize that the warp basically. existed besides the powers. Exactly.

The Dolman Gates let them break in, and it was thanks to a certain Citan whose name I wrote down, and I'm not going to say. Naya does... Let's just go with Zafa. Yeah. Yeah, Zatha. What's up, Zafa? This, now they can bust the Webway.

So the only defense that the old ones have to the Necron's breaking of the webway, because the way the way of the Dalman Gates work gives them access to a chunk of the Webway, the old ones headed and then destroy that section of Webway. So they wouldn't have to fight the necrons in the webway, but they were losing chunks of the webway to the necrons as they invaded. I do want to point out the fact that I've agreed with John several times in this cast, and I nod to him, which no one can see because we don't video this. We're an audio-only cast, so I want to show how dumb occasionally I am,

that I'm using hand motions and head gestures on an audio-only cast. These things happen. These things happen. The next piece, though, the necrons, have to deal with is the warp because the warp is not only used by the old ones, it's also used by the Eldar now. And it's bonkers. This is awesome, though. Because the Necron's straight up science magic out.

They're like, you know what? I'm pretty annoyed at you guys using these psychic powers on us and doing all these magic related things. How about I just create something with technology that just negates that? Period. In a wild area, too. These pylons, these necron pods are massively important. They realize this, because the C-10...

C-10... C-10 primarily once driving this, but the necrons are behind it as well, realized they need to rid the galaxy at the immaterial. And that if we can keep the imitarium from the bacterium, it would help them win the war. The irony being, what a great idea. Like, honestly, really, really.

really good idea. Well, it wasn't at the time. The warp wasn't broken yet. Yeah, but... I mean, for them, it was a great idea. Later on, it's a great idea, too. They begin constructing these pylons all around the galaxy, and wherever the pylons are, you just can't break out of the warp into it.

Katie, obviously, being one that we've discussed, has a big piece of this, but it would render Saki Power's mute. And they were super not ready for this. The old ones are physically, by all, again, stories that they've had, physically feeble. Everything that they do is per psychics.

So if you have a race that does every, I mean, everything, including movement, basically, by psychics, and then you just go, nope, you just have guys that are pretty easy to kill because if I'm laying on a cushion

and I can't move, yeah, not as a typical. Go ahead and just pop them off. This then also, so to recap, because this is an important way that they win the war, the webway is now faltering. They can't use the webway to get around as much as they want to. And then places where they are engaged in battle, the necrons, the necrans and the C-Tan put up these pylons to start shutting down the psychic powers. So the old ones start falling back. This all, though, comes to a gruesome end with the enslave or plague, which we covered before.

But again, if you can listen to the last episode, there is. is a species that appears probably the first recorded negative species from the warp. They're probably worse than before this, but the first ones recorded are enslavers, which are... Well, the old ones are fighting, not even losing battle, because they're still, they were dominating before. They were doing okay. Yeah, the enslavers kind of show up just behind and start snuffing out old ones. Inslavers are a being from the warp that feeds on psykers, and the more powerful the psychor, the more they want to feed on them. What they do is those of you play D&D or just Balders Gate 3,

it's kind of a theme in Balders Gate 3, the Mind Thralls. They're just Mind Flores. Yeah, the Mind Flores are mildly important in the game. Yeah, but that's what they are. Yeah, the Mind Flares, hey, come on, they didn't. They're 1,000% Mind Flores. Are you accusing GW of an IP violation? I'm saying that they went to...

Next, you're going to tell me that Dune is not completely different. I'm just saying that they went to the Monster Manual and went, Mindflares, yes. Scratch out mind flare and put inslaver. Well, they did, but they made them look kind of like beholders. So. With a mind flare head. Oh, they do?

Okay. Yeah. They have the things. Oh, yeah, you're right. Good point. Never mind. It's a mind flare. It's a floating mind flare.

But anyway, the mind flares come in. Sorry, the enslavers come in. Again, mind flares, we continue. And begin wrecking the old ones. Bad, bad. Just rip in the trids. So bad that this. stage, the old ones just disappear.

They don't say they die. They don't die. They don't die. They just disappear. Yeah. And the Eldar started dealing with the enslavers. Are we going to have to do a castle in the slon? Probably.

But the Eldar and the cork is they give zero shits about the inslavers. The court just just hit the court. The court punched the inslavers. Yeah. The court just beat up, like headlocked. The inslavers. No. Yeah.

But during this. time and this whole thing lasts a long time. Yeah, these are, these, these are millennia like we're going through here. Well, let's, let's talk about what happened after.

So the neckrads effectively realize that they're winning. Yeah. And the silent king, not super excited about everything that happened. And this dude can hold a grudge. He can. And he also is smart enough to realize,

that the Catan, Cetan, are wildly powerful, but they're also wildly dangerous. Once this war concludes, what are they going to do next? So he decides the best way to deal with them is stab them right in the back while they're fighting. Luckily for him, as the war is coming to an end, the amount of death that is occurring is obviously diminishing because everyone's kind of already dead.

And the C-Tan are running out of souls to feed on, which leads the C-Tan into fighting amongst themselves. And there's some interesting stories here of actually the Laughing God being part of some of these battles, like convincing two C-Tans to fight each other. The C-Tans begin killing each other and eating each other because they're so desperate for energy, which reduces the number of C-Tan. There is zero record of how many we started away. Was there five? Was there 5,000?

Was there, who knows? No one knows, but effectively, at this stage, the C-Tan are down to only a few, like, key and major C-Tan left. And the war is, at this stage, it's not over. We'll get to that in a minute. But it's well-won. The old ones have now disappeared. Well, it's well-one-ish. But there's two races that are gigantic.

Well, they're not gigantic, but they are becoming gigantic, which is Eldar and what will be the orcs. is the course. The Eldon Cork can show care over there somewhere. Yep. And then this fight goes, and this is a big deal because a lot of these wars aren't, Horacee took a little while. We're talking this took, again, thousands of years. Yeah.

Well, this next part doesn't. This next part is fairly quick. Yeah, but I'm saying the entire war in heaven. The war in heaven could be a million years for all we know. We actually don't know how long it is. Exactly. So we have the thing. And when they start attacking,

though, shit just go down. So all of this happens. The Catan aren't going out like that, though. Yeah, the Necrons have a problem. And so they decide that they're going to go and build some super cannons. And they're going to, it's actually, this is pretty clever. They realize that the Catan can't be killed effectively. They can be consumed.

And the necrons can't eat stores. Or they can be separated. That began the solution is that the way to kill a Katan is that the way to kill a Katan is, is to literally consume its energy. Unless you have the ability to do that, you can't kill them. But what if we break them? And this is what the Silent King decides.

They build these super weapons that actually can blast a star god into pieces. And then they give these containment vessels where they're going to shackle these shards and keep them separate from each other. You're getting near to it. Because the way, when you kill a Satan, what it would happen is it would explode, and then it would reform. It would just Dr. Manhattan.

Wreck you horribly. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for dissipating me. I don't care at all. I'm coming back at you. So they build these, and they're called Tesseracts, hence the Tesseract vaults. This way, they're able to blast the Cetan, and the second that they blast them in, they would go and capture all these shards, put them in these vaults that, you know, these are actually. These are actually not large.

I mean, the game, they're large, but in reality, they're actually fairly small. They hold a small shard of a star god, and they're locked away. This way, the gods can't reform. And they do this. The Necron's actually,

are successful here. Whoa, whoa, whoa, successful, you've got to put a big asterisk on this. Well, they do kill, is it three satans? It's actually not clear. So you have Deceiver. You have the Deceiver,

the Nightbringer, the Void Dragon, which is from different, but, and then you have, what's called Transcendant right now, but there's multiple Catanns that are there. Okay.

The thing about that, I say, I give you the asterix on the successful because, wow, they lose fleets, woe, like the death toll is catastrophic.

They become, this may phrase this better. The consequence of this success is the death of massive portions of the Necron. Blake, when we say massive, I mean, half, two thirds, I mean, they just, they get wrecked. There's not much left. And the problem is that the Necron, remember, this war in heaven was the Necron and the Satan against the old ones, the Eldar and the Crook.

At this stage, the Satan are gone, so the necrons have no allies. The old ones are gone, so there's one less enemy. But the Eldar and the Crook are very much so alive. Well, the biggest thing about this. The necrons have lost well over half. Also, during this time, which we, again, don't know how much time has passed in this big battle, the Eldar and the cork have just been getting gigantic. This is so much time has passed.

Their empires are just growing. There's so many more of them. They become technologically more. They're growing. And the entire time this is happening, the necrown have, have maybe, you know, two-third losses of their entire civilization, and they realize we can't win against those guys right now. We're about to get wrecked. Just no holds barred.

Eldar and Cork are going to run over us completely. And the thing is, we still have a vast empire, but we're looking into the future and we're seeing, I can't win an extended forever battle. with these guys, we need another option. And Selling King decides the best thing to do, and this actually is fairly clever, is he knows that eventually the Eldar and the Cork

would fall themselves. Well, they do, again, they look into and they run models. This is the biggest thing because, again, the necrons are so wildly technologically superior. They look not into the future with magic. They run constructive models and say, if we just leave them alone, these are too

destructing. The poets are going to kill themselves because they're not supposed to be warriors in this other race. The croaker is going to do the coroner. Yeah, just violently, wildly violent. Yeah. And they will destroy themselves.

We just need to lay low for a little while. Unfortunately, apparently, even though we're technologically superior, we don't have alarm clocks that work really well. Right. He decides, Silent King decides the best thing to do is to build these giant tombs where everyone going to stasis. Because we didn't, we touched on it briefly.

But the necrons, when they were the necronteer, mastered stasis pods where this would allow them to move from their home planet to other civilizations. They would just sleep the whole time. And they decided to go, well, why don't we just build those at a massive scale? And they build these civilization wide scale. And they build these stasis chambers and all over. all throughout, and all of the necrons go into stasis, and then phase shift, which is their version of teleporting, below ground effectively, where no one knows that they exist.

So all throughout the galaxy, there are entire tomb worlds sitting below the surface that no one knows are there. And way below the surface. Like they don't, people, other civilizations don't even know the necrons are there. Yeah, you don't take a well and bump into this thing. It's well below that, like close to the core. We'll dive at us more probably the next episode. I'll talk about how they're run with spiders and scarabs.

It's actually pretty cool. Yeah, actually there's a bunch of non-sentient. Yeah, that maintain them pseudo. But the last thing the Silent King does after ordering everyone into sleep. Huge mistake. Yeah, well, I mean, it's... Huge mistake. It ends up being a pretty big mistake.

It doesn't be a big mistake. They do rewrite it a little bit. So I'll point is, but he destroys the Engram trip. So he has an ingram chip is what gave him the power over all of the necrons. He destroys this. He does this because in his mind, he failed his people. So. And then he goes into dark space and pouts.

Yeah, he failed his people. So I'm going to, so everyone goes to sleep except for the silent king. And he takes his ship and heads out into dark space. And his idea was, I'm going to leave them all of their own devices. They'll reemerge when the alarm clock goes off. They'll come up, they'll pop up above ground. Everyone will be hunky-dory. No concerns whatsoever.

My bad guys. And again, I shouldn't have, I meant to push AM. I accidentally push PM on the alarm. And they sleep for a long time past. 60-something million years. Yeah, they missed that alarm by a lot. Now, that being said, they missed their alarm. Luckily, the Silent King has to come back to the galaxy.

Because while out in dark space, he bumps into something. He realizes there's an incredible threat to the galaxy. Are we going to comment on the fact that Tyrannids are the old ones? Yeah, we'll be talking about the next episode. Tuesday. But with that, we'll break till the next one, which will be Necrons Part 2. And that one, we're going to dive into the Return of the Silent King, to resurge the Necrons.

Probably spends the time talking about how hilarious that must have been for the Imperium Space all of a sudden have. Being fully conquered, functional worlds that have been human worlds for, thousands of years. And all of a sudden, giant pyramids start showing up from the crust of the earth. Yeah. And it's popping up and then everything coming out and they are super

murdery. Super murdery and super tech savvy. Yeah. Oh, the ad mech were pissed. They were genuinely pissed and this all happened. Anyway, with that though, please like and subscribe. Leave us a positive comment. Again, if it's a negative comment, just tell us directly and I'll fix it.

Well, I mean, in a good way. Like, I'm not saying don't say bad things. I'm saying if you've got a criticism. I love you're defending this. But, I mean, I'm trying to not be a complete jerk on it. With that, though, this has been John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. I'll see you guys next week.