Sort of. Basically I think that the average necron doesn't have enough of a consciousness TO go insane. Not enough of them survived the transfer for there to be enough of a personality where insanity is an option. Lords and immortals on the other hand have more intact personalities and thus are more capable of going insane.

Do standard necrons have a programme? I thought they just did what they were told in a very instinctual sort of way.

Hellebore

could a necron immortal even, talk to humans, with the intent of killing even more stuff than he is likely to do himself, or start a war?.
And does it have to be a necron killing people, for c'than to be happy?

Sarius said:

I always assumed that it was the Gaus weapons that fed the C'tan in some way, completely breaking the target down into an instant energy that is somehow in some way absorbed by the C'tan or some such. Of curse, if something like that's the case, then why the Flayed Ones?

>_> er... someone might not have thought the whole idea through very well, but I won't tell if you don't.

The C'tan are stellar gourmets, they would sacrifice a billion people just to distill a nightcap made from despair and terror.

I'm not sure though that turning someone's kidneys into energy would be very filling, they seem to want to eat just the energy that forms emotion.

They'd still need a military though because the food has a lot of guns to protect themselves with.

You could look at the flayed ones as egg beaters. They slash up the prey until they are nice and tender with fear and terror, before they are consumed by the C'tan. Or, maybe their claws have mini phase teleporters in them and they tease out the energy from their prey?

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Hmmm... kind of makes you wonder if C'Tan have a warp reflection just like every other sentient thing (see the automaton made by the Heretek that a psyker reported as having "mind-runes" within them). In fact, kind of makes you wonder if they eat souls just like the Dark Eldar as well, and whether the reason that they hate the warp isn't because of the fact that they're particularly weak against it, but because of the fact that on the grand-scale of warp powers they're merely around Gamma or Delta (i.e. High level that can do quite a bit), but not nearly approaching Alpha or the infamous Alpha Plus ranking, thereby meaning that particularly powerful human/Eldar/etc. psykers and daemons can beat them in a soul-wrestling contest.

Just throwing that out there . By the way Hellebore, thanks for reminding Xisor about the whole conciousness (or sentience maybe?) losing thing with the Necrons. I was afraid I'd have to give a lecture about the ware and tear of copying memory over a protracted period of time, which would cause you all to abandon the thread .

*Takes deep breath* C'tan do NOT eat souls. They eat energy generated by the biochemical reactions in living beings or the energy generated by the stars. The soul is a chunk of the warp and the warp is anathema to the C'tan.

As far as Necron threats go in a campaign I think the most logical level of foe would be small group of Flayed Ones or maybe even a Wraith or two. They are the most likely to be operating on thei own given their role sowing terror and confusion in the enemie back lines.

Most other elements of a Necron force appear only in army sized chunks once mobilised for war. Unless the story has them stumble upon a Tomb complex. Then having to face the escalating level of force of Necrons on their way out to call for help would make sense.

Deimos said:

But, my friend, what is a soul other than a 30+ dimensional representation of your biological structure? Therefore, in theory, when they consume your metabolic products could you not say that in a way they are eating the soul, just in a more round-about fashion? As stated before too, is the warp anathema to the C'Tan or are they just particularly bad psykers, seeing as how everything that is sentient minus the blanks have a reflection within the warp. Yes, I enjoy being difficult .

The Baron said:

I guess you could say that, but you wouldn't be entirely correct ;-p It would be like eating a slice of bread and saying you've eaten a loaf of bread. If our souls souls are some 30th dimensional aspect our us, then what ever happens to one of our 3 dimensional selves would be of little consequence to it much like something happening to one of our 1 dimensional selves is of little consequence to our three dimensional selves.

Hellbore, I hadn't thought of them feeding off of emotions mostly due to the warps perceived monopoly on the whole feeding on emotions and eating souls thing but in going back over the write-ups of the Night Bringer and Deceiver, it clearly states that is what they do. It begs the question though, is it the physical energies produced by these emotional states or the soul that is devoured?

The warp is simply assumed to be anathema to them due to their hatred of it. However, their hatred stems from the Old Ones explicit use of it as their primary weapon. To deprive them of their weapon and all races that they created, the C'tan wished to seal off the warp from reality permanently in what they called The Great Work. The warp, to them, is simply a weapon that the Old Ones used to muck up the C'tans happy funtime buffet and make it a bit more difficult for them to indiscriminately feed as well as challenge their position of supreme gods of all.

It's the physical energies and chemicals generated by those states that they find what makes sentient beings *tasty* as opposed to nurishing like the massive energy generated by a star. Remember they eat sentients because they taste better not because they are good for them. One good piece of evidence to that, is the write up in the Necron codex when the Deciever goes to eat that assassain and remarks on how tasty the genetic modification drug (forget the name of it) makes humans.

And if you properly represent a Wraith in Dark Heresy like it's presented in the Tabletop it will definitely give a party a run for their thrones. Fast, flight, incorpereal, heavily armored, forcefield and a bucket full of attacks coupled with a mean streak eons in the making.

Deimos said:

Well Deimos, I'd keep razzing you about the connection of 30th dimension to 3rd dimension (especially since I'm a bioinformatics minor meaning I have a decent, but by no means exemplary knowledge of Chemistry and Biology), but I think I'll be nice and call it quits.

Though Graver, being the man who pioneered my college's ungodly efficient/effective way of navigating objects from 2 to 255 dimensions, I can tell you right now that what happens at the lower dimensions has an exponential effect on the higher dimensions (i.e. If you change something on the 3rd dimension it will cause one hell of a change on the 6th dimension and so on and so forth). Remember that everytime you go up a dimension you're taking all the dimensions that came before into account and that one of them being changed (Note: This is from a geometric point of view) is going to drastically alter the shape.

The C'tan eat electromagnetism. They were formed of stars and ate the electromagnetic energy produced in stars.

The nervous system produces electromagnetic radiation. The C'tan decided they liked the 'taste' of the electromagnetic radiation produced within a sentient animal's mind.

Obviously, the wavelength, amplitude et al produced by emotions in the mind are represented as electromagnetic waves that are especially delectable.

The soul is a mirror of the mind made of warp energy in a seperate dimension. Emotions in the Warp are products of that mirror. However those emotions are reproductions of the electromagnetic impulses produced in the brain, not the literal emotions themselves.

What you have is like a Wireless system. The Soul is a mirror of the Mind but they are not physically or directly connected. They are connected 'wirelessly' in that whatever the mind does, the soul will also do (although only in its warp equivalent) and sometimes what the soul does reflects back into the mind as well.

The point is that C'tan and daemons are eating both ends of a wireless string. The C'tan consume the realspace electromagnetic generation of emotion and daemons consume the warp mirror equivalent of that emotion (because in the warp an emotion or thought is a literal thing, an entity or object in and of itself, rather than an electromagnetic wave funciton in realspace).

That doesn't mean a C'tan is actually eating warp energy though.

Of course, GW ignored the fact that the necrons should be able to quite easily artificially produce electromagnetic energy of the same frequency etc as that produced by the emotion of sentient organisms, bypassing the need to eat the energy directly from a human's mind. 'Synthetic' bio energy would be identical to the natural stuff, so the only answer is that the C'tan are insane or just part of the Clan Bastard McCheesypants.

Hellebore

What i make of this is, that necrons arent vulnerable to warp powers, but they dont like deamons eating the other end of the soul cake, and thus highly oppose them.

And the energy beings in DotDG that posses people, are like taking the real part of the soul that cthan likes, and its likely that the things they are fleeing from are likely the necrons.

Thanks for the explination, Hellbore. When it was just the energy generated by emotions, one had to wonder where that energy ended and the energy of the emotion in the warp began. You explained it quite nicely

It's one of the core problems with Warhammer in general. They give very vague definitions and then you have to try and figure out just how it all works.

I wrote a musing on how the soul works in 40k because of this very problem. I think you can find it in this forum (I posted it a couple of places so can't remember if it's here or not).

Here it is:

Please note this is not necessarily 'true' in GW terms, merely something I tried to piece together in a way I liked. If it contradicts with anything in the 'canon', well, you can guess which I prefer....

I am not trying to claim this is 'true' so it can't be 'wrong'. It has always been a soft spot in 40k structure for me, so this was an attempt to at least pseudorealistically explain it.

If anyone has other ideas on how souls work in 40k, I'd be interested to hear them.

This is merely my own idea based on the information we have from GW about souls and realspace/warp interaction.

How does a sentient creature have a soul and non sentients don't? How does this relate to pariahs and how does a warp engine work? These are all questions I tried to answer in a way that was internally consistent (and being honest, the warp DOES have internal consistency otherwise souls would not be so regular and easily containable).

Everything in reality is reflected in the warp. Every atom, every star. This is why the gravity of a star affects warp currents making ship translation into warp space within a star system very risky. However, the reflection is microscopic, more than microscopic, nanoscopic. Each atom reflects into the warp at an equivalent scale smaller than the quarks that make it up, so for all intents and purposes their reflections are invisible within the warp.

A soul is an interesting construct as it is a product of a much larger reflection relative to its molecular components than all other matter. This is entirely due to the electromagnetic frequencies that form the core of sentience. The energy that functions as the processing centre for living creatures' minds (irrespective of its physical structure, it could be gaseous, plasmic etc) produces a resonance with the boundaries between warp space and realspace, effectively widening the aperture of reflection.

As an organism's evolution brings it closer and closer to that point of sentience, its neural energy signature produces a correspondingly larger reflection in the warp. This also means that sentient creatures lack a 'true', bright or distinct soul in the warp until they develop sentience (often coupled with self awairness whicn in humans is around 8 months after birth). Before this its warp signature is much more like that of any other organism.

Some species or individuals within species are sentient but lack or have a very small warp reflection. This is generally because their neural pathways form in a manner that loops the resonance back in on itself effectively reflecting the warp in reality instead of the other way around. This inverted reflection means that their presence in the warp is either small, non existent or even negative which can result in other nearby souls to be disrupted and producing the results seen in the proximity of pariahs.

A psychic individual produces an electromagnetic pattern that works closer to the warp/realspace boundary, allowing their soul to act as a conduit for warp energy. Highly psychic races like the eldar not only form sentient nerual pathways at an early age (generally early in gestation) but also have a naturally more harmoneous energy production allowing for an almost perfect merging of realspace and the warp. This means that the warp energy can be manipulted with less effort and transferred much more quickly. Some humans are born with unique genetics that produce similar networks enabling them to channel more energy.

There are two things that govern the transference of energy, the degree of harmoneous resonance (the higher the degree the less 'realspace' gets in the way of the transference) and the SIZE of harmoneous resonance. The aperture of reflection increases in size through the formation of more complicated EM pathways all weaving together to create a large area of resonance that opens a wider 'path' to the soul in the warp, which in turn makes the soul brighter and bigger. The resonance of this energy lattice breaks the barrier between real and warp space, the greater harmony the more completely this is broken.

Here is a rough analogy: The 'aperture' is like that in an old camera, one of those cool iris like shutters. As the iris is constricted less light is allowed in, reflecting the 'size' of aperture. The 'harmony' is like a cloth placed over the iris. A thin gauzy material lets quite a bit of light in, whilst a sheet of canvas lets none in. Glass, although a phyisical object lets pretty much ALL the light in. these are not mutually exclusive, so you can have a wide aperture and a sheet of canvas, or a narrow aperture and a piece of glass. Some less sentient creatures manifest psychic powers, like the gyrinx or crotalid. These will generally have a high resonance (so a sheet of glass) but a low aperture (so a narrow iris, indicating a simple intelligence).

Beings such as the C'tan may have a large aperture (indicating a bewilderingly complicated EM network forming their sentience) but a sheet of canvas covering it. That is, although they are sentient the energy does not form in a harmony that matches the boundary of warp space.

Things like Warp Engines are inorganic constructions that attempt to mimic this effect. They are composed of mindbogglingly complicated energy fields held in place by magnetic and gravitic containment in an attempt to produce an energy network large enough and complicated enough to breach an area of warpspace the size of a space ship. Because of the complicatedness of the process and the energy requirements, the engine is only activated for a fraction of a second, just enough to breach reality. For this second though the ship flares in the warp with an artificial (although thoughtless) soul, attracting daemonic entities to it.

Force weapons use similar mechanisms, utilising crystals that naturally resonate with the warp/realspace boundary. When channeled by a psyker these are capable of drawing energy from the warp in an artificial manner.

Some postulations suggest that the most advanced AIs of the Golden Age approached true sentience, to the point where their nerual networks provided warp reflections and giving them true living souls. Whether this is true or not is unkown, but the technology for warp engines comes from the same time frame and where it not for their single purposed construction could be classified as an AI in their own right.

Hellebore