I've been tentatively playing around with the idea of introducing Necrons to my campaign at some point in future. In preparation for that I've read pretty much all Lexicum and Necron Codex have had to offer, but I'm short on some of the more detailed fluff... Can anyone help with following questions:

Necron Size: How tall is the basic necron warrior? How about immortal? Are flayed ones same "chassis model" as warriors in terms of size and such? How much would a necron body weight?

Necron Constructs: Are tombs spyders and/or scarabs artificial intelligence robots or do they also have remnants of a necron "soul" binded into them? Or are they simply remote-controlled drones controlled by necron-operators within Nodal Command system?

Necron Monoliths: How about monliths? Are monoliths vehicles with drivers, some sort of AI robots or remote-controlled drones?

Necron Modularity: Are necrons modular or individual as respect to their bodies? Could the same necron "individual" be turned from warrior into destroyer just by replacings its legs, spine and primary armament?

Polaria said:

Basic Necron Warriors would be about the same height as a person, perhaps a little taller if they were not hunched over. This would hold true for just about all the bipedal necron types. I would think that Tomb Spyders have an advanced AI since they are supposed to be the repair and maintenance units for the Necrontyr. As for scarabs I have always thought of them as drone units that respond to the Necron Lords. Monoliths seem most like a terminator HK unit, with its own command and control system but no driver, remember that the door in the "front" of the vehicle is more like a multidimensional portal (think a dark webway) than an entry to the vehicle. As for modularity I don't think that a Necron Warrior would handle being grafted onto the body of a Destroyer, their software probably would not be able to handle the modification. The thing to remember with most of the tech that we have seen with the Necrontyr is that it is mostly all "living metal" according to the background. Now that could be a way of saying that its a form of Nanotech but that is something that really could use addressing. Also bear in mind that the Necron's are not well understood by the Imperium or Mechanicum, IIRC only the Eldar know much about them but I don't think they are willing to talk about it.

Remember that the more advanced Necrons are uploaded individuals. Some like the Flayed Ones are nuts. Others like the Immortals are pretty sane and at least as smart as a human. The C'tan of course implanted loyal to all Necrons when the Necrontyr were uploaded. See the various wikis for details, and note that the are a number of different spins on the Necrons and 40k history.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrons

Line of thought of course leads to the line that the Matrix sequels should have had. "What is the matter Mr. Anderson. Have you never hear of backups?" Personally I find myself thinking of Necrons in a BSG light. The C'tan are very few (~4), and generally not in the picture. One can see various Necron castes rebelling. Or small groups of Necrons that have broken free of their implanted loyalty. This being 40k this doesn't make them good Necrons.....

T-800 said:

According to lore even the most basic necron warrior is an actual person whose personality was "uploaded" into the necron body. I don't think they have "software" like we understand it. After all, accoridng to lore even if the necron "dies" by being broken beyond repair they continue to "live" within the Nodal Command system and can be assigned a new body again... What I meant was more like if destroyers require such a specific skillset that they are a different "class" from warriors like flayed ones and wraiths definitely must be.

I've always thinked necrons not like robots but like an actual alien species, just with metal bodies and chirurgically removed emotions.

Polaria said:

That depends on the fluff source you are reading. Some seem to indicate the warriors are robots, others that the got some sort of restricted upload (not much of the orginal survived), and others that they are uploaded with major restrictions to their free will. Any of the above can lead to interesting stories.

A memetic virus inflects a group of necrons. The warriors embrace their freedom. The immortals want to return to the fold. The flayed ones want to be uploaded into new bodies. The other necrons outside the group want to destroy them to contain the infection.....

A Necron Lord wants to create new class of Necron by uploading humans. The rest of the Necrons aren't happy about this....

First necron warriors aren't made stupid, it's just that each time one "dies" it loses a part of it's mind because their copying engrams are weaker then those of a Immortal or lord. So a warrior who has "died" a few hundred times is little more then a shambling automaton, and because of the war in heaven most warriors have "died" many times. I like to think that the ones who have "died" the least are squad leaders, because they are more intelligent and obviously better soldiers.

Most necron tomb worlds lost contact with each other because of equipment failures and the communication nodes being looted by certain aliens...

This means that each C'tan only has control over a very small number of tomb worlds (from the image, maybe seven at a max) with all other tombs either unwoken or cut off from each other. In addition many Lords on these tombs never awoke, or haven't yet. So each tomb is controlled by it's highest ranking Lord. This could mean that a tomb only fixes it'self and hunts for resources, or that the tob ranking Lord, who may have gone mad from his experiences will lead. Building larger and larger Necrodermis bodies for it's self. Maybe with deliusions of godhood... In my eyes this type of tombworld is perfect for the purpose of a DH campaign. An active tomb will have hundreds to Lords awake in it, whether they deal with maintenice or attack, each lord has a function they preform, meaning a tomb that is missing certain jey lords will not do certain things. (like attack, or try to reestablish communication)

All information pulled from the 5th edtion BRB.

I would agree with everything printed before - information is spartan, and pretty contrary. Part of the issue is that any 40K Necron player has been waiting an awfully long time for a new Codex, as the current lists for the Necrons is woefully inadequate in communicating the variety of different constructs you could see. For this reason, be inventive - if its terrifying and technical (and loosely 'Egyptian' in theme), then it could be Necron.

Certainly, the extra information provided with 40K Apocalypse supplements seems to indicate that there are various 'levels' of Necron Lord, from Bronze Lords who oversee the deployment of units in battle through Silver and Gold level commanders to a mysterious 'Platinum' level of 'never seen' commanders who may be the will of the machine expressed through sentient Tomb Ships - with an awesome intellect akin to ships minds from an Iain M Banks 'Culture' novel. Certainly, these commanders have their own personalities, if it can be called such, are capable of feeling emotion and have plans that are beyond simply harvesting. Revenge, manipulation of the lesser races and restoration of the Necron control network would be some, as well as the awakening of the remaining two Star Lords would be another (the 'Dragon,' currently incumbent on Mars, and the 'Outsider' spoken of in Eldar Harlequin lore). The Apocalypse book also threw out Lords with specific roles and abilities, able to harness Gauss Lightning arcs to confuse augmetic readings and blanket an area in a wave of sensor blindness, or incapacitate craft or machinery, maybe even bending them to the will of the Necrons; or Lords tasked with re-awakening and teleporting newly awakened Necrons to the surface of a planet.

Necron Lords would make, for this reason, an absolutely terrifying enemy - and the Codex and other supplements has only hinted at the kinds of Tech Sorcery they might wield. I suppose I see the Necrons as Techo Undead - I certainly think this was probably how GW originally conceived them, and their hatred of the living comes with that obvious linking factor. But the technology, as already stated, is such as to put to shame every other race in the Galaxy. Necron sentience can operate like a 'Ghost in the Machine,' taking over automated defence systems, overloading things like Tau Battle Suits, stalling interstellar warships etc...

As for the minions, even an ordinary Warrior has a strength on par with an Astartes - able to tear a human limb from limb with their bare metal hands, but as SomVone rightly says below, with little sentience left after many rebirths and centuries in stasis. Warriors are like terminators in their implacable nature, that they will simply not stop until totally dismembered or disabled. Immortals will be covered in more archaic patterns of living metal, that moves and shapes itself , as well as glowing with a green patina. I always think that Necron metal close up would show incredibly detailed micro-circuitry, and like the Thing or Transformers, individually react to being damaged.

I have always thought that the most horrifying Necron construct to come across would be a Pariah, one of the Necron's terrifying 'next evolutionary step' monstrosities, that are psychic nulls, soulless entities encased in armour that makes them look like gods. Their armour and appearance mimics the human form, but with soulless staring eye sockets and surrounded by a visible nimbus of power they would contain some of the essence or engrams of the C'Tan themselves made human.

I think that the Necrons make really scary, but also incredibly powerful bad guys. They could easily be the secret 'benefactors' behind a tech heresy cult, in the way the Slaugh are 'benefactors,' softening up a planet or sector for a decent dose of harvesting, planting foolish or greedy human agents where they can cause most damage. The last thing to consider is that a Lord might be able to physically manifest itself to resemble a human, using twisted tech holograms to project an image, so could be masqerading as a rival Inquisitor, a Magos or a planetary Governor?

RedMike said:

As happened in the BL publication Xenology where a Necron successfully impersonated an Inquisitor for over a century, and then manipulated several other inquisitorial factions to achieve his aims.

DW

Traveller61 said:

Was this an actual Necron or C'Tan?

Polaria said:

That sounds like the Deceiver.

Wilfred Owen said:

It sure does and thats why I asked... Necron infiltrator (maybe a less-than-average regressed Flayed One?) would be a nice idea for a medium-to-high level adventure or series of adventures. C'Tan is just too powerfull for anything except Ascencion characters with a few companies of Astartes and a couple of armored regiments of Imperial Guardsmen as backup...

It was a Necron Lord, no C'tan involved. You actually see a picture of the Necron in question.

If you haven't read it, the novel Hellforged describes a great many types of Necrons, including an awakened Tomb-World.

MILLANDSON said:

I'm curious, as I haven't read Xenology, how did it pull it off? Was it "wearing" the flesh of a man or did it have some sort of tech-based illusion going?

Also, the Apocalypse book does mention that at the lowest levels of awakening for a tomb world some small detachments of warriors are sent out and for a time have complete freedom in their actions, or something like that. That always seemed a bit contradictory with the fluff that warriors have little of themselves left, though I think a "rogue" Necron strike force that is not willing to obey orders once a Lord comes out of stasis would be very interesting indeed.

numb3rc said:

I just remember the image of a Necron Lord at the end. I'll have to dust my copy of the book off (not read it in a while) and read it through again to give you an accurate answer. If someone else wants to jump in so this gets answered faster, that's cool too.

numb3rc said:

The "independent" detachments are easy to explain and has been quite well outlined in Lexicanum. However, due to the nature of the Nodal Command network I don't really believe a force of Necrons could "rebel". Who would they rebel against? After all, the Necron lords are, in sense, as much slaves to Nodal Command network as any Necron Warrior... and the Nodal Command network is not just an "overmind", it is actually a hivemind like network where the souls of all Necrons (warriors, lords, flayed ones etc.) are stored.

The legions of a tomb world appear to have no permanent organizational structure. Each battle, campaign and Harvest causes a specific response from the Tomb World's controlling program leading to an ever-changing chain of command.

This is made possible by the Nodal Command system. A Nodal Command system allocates a hierarchy to all of the elements within it, and subsequently gives a greater operational, and decision-making, capacity to certain nodes before slaving lower ranking portions of the of the system to these nodes.

As this hierarchy allows for simultaneous control of a large number of Necrons by a high ranking node, while still allowing independent reaction at the level of a Necron Warrior, it allows precise organization of the Necron force as a whole while also allowing detached groups to analyze, and react to, unforeseen situations independently.

There is also a quite detailed description of how Tombs act when awakening commences:

Primary Awakeners Group
This group consists of the Tomb Spyders and Scarabs that are the first to be activated during the awakening of a Tomb World.

Raider Force Group
Consisting of a smaller number of Necron Warriors and Scarabs, a Raider Force has autonomy within the Nodal Command system (to the level allowed by its programming) and is designed to scout the area around the Tomb World to determine whether any other races are nearby. The destruction of a Raider Force either causes the Tomb World to begin the second phase of awakening, or the dispatch of a second Raider Force.

Reserve Command Group [silver-Level]
Upon its return, if it has been successful, a Raider Force will be subsumed into the command of a usually Silver-level Necron Lord. In a combat situation, the reserve command Necron Lord will take to the field of battle to act as both a Silver-level node and as a potential replacement for any higher-ranking Lords incapacitated as a result of combat.

Necron Line Formations Group [bronze-Level]
The main bulk of Necron armies are gathered into the Necron Line Formation level of Nodal Command. Led by up to four Bronze-level lords, the line formations are split into various fighting formations.

The Lords of the Line Formations can pass information between themselves, acting a battlefield command circuit, while also uploading data to the Platinum command. If required, these Lords can also call upon the Reserve Command if physical support or data analysis is required.

Line Formations are activated by Tomb Spyders, and are inserted and removed from the Nodal Command as required. Each Tomb World can have dozens of Line Formations at any one time.

'Xenology' does indeed use a Necron Lord - nothing else explains the last image in the book, which is definitely a Necron rather than a C'Tan, and it seems that this particular Necron has been impersonating an Inquisitor all along, manipulating both a second, more credulous Inquisitor and a Mechanicus adept into dissecting a range of creatures, including an Ork Nob, an Eldar, a Tau Ethereal, a Genestealer and a Hive Tyrant, and a host of other 'lesser' races, like Hrud. The Necron Lord occupies the 'last' cell in the complex, and is never referred to directly, simply as 'that' prisoner - it is only at the end that the prisoner is released and the truth comes to light. If I am right, the Necrons here are simply interested in finding out more about all of these other races, but the Necron Lord seems to get a particular 'pleasure' out of manipulating Imperium lackies to do the dirty work. Fluff in the Codex, either regarding the C'Tan themselves or senior leader Necrons seems to indicate a similar scheming, manipulative evil or visceral horror and dark intellect which would make a Necron Lord, able to impersonate a human a terrifying campaign enemy. As to whether or not it's wearing human flesh or not - I don't know. Given the Necrons adaptation of ancient technology it would be believeable if it was a device that was causing the change, perhaps in the same way that the Deciever can assume a new, more pleasing form - perhaps the traits of this C'Tan have been passed down to its most 'trusted' minions.

Polaria mentions some good stuff above from the Apocalypse book - and a small 'detachment' of Necrons would perhaps always indicate a larger tomb complex of other Necrons nearby in stasis. Another source for information may be the Dawn of War 'Dark Crusade' supplement which provides within the mechanics of the game a range of different Necron constructs like Obelisks and Black Stones reminiscent of 2001! I have always liked the idea that Monoliths are grounded structures that can animate and start flying around blasting stuff, and the creeping horror of a bunch of acolytes slowly realising that they have unwittingly clambered inside such a construct would be priceless - or that they have accessed a Necron web way even!

That Xenology bit sounds pretty nice. Makes it easier for me to plan a little Necron awakening into my campaign without throwing acolytes head first into a sleeping Tomb World... I was thinking this particular Tomb World is a bit off the charted paths and non-active for most part but has sent out several "infiltration teams" to nearby worlds to asses the potential for harvesting them. The first sign of things to come will be the infiltration teams... the second will be small-scale landings of necron warriors who just show up, kill everything and vanish. All the while acolytes are forced to seek information from obscure ancient prophesies, dreams of deranged psykers and odd ramblings of xenos...

Well, good luck with that and let us know how you get on with this idea - I often wish I had any time at all to really write something spectacular for Dark Heresy!

There is an illustration early on in Xenology of the inquisitor that set up the menagery. His bone structure very obviously matches the later necron illustration's metal skeleton head (high forhead, small chin, extremely prominent cheek bones).

It certainly seemed to be alluding to the Terminator style hidden assassin. However only a necron of immortal and up could possibly pull off a human because only they have enough of a mind left.

As for the necron 'mind' the descriptions lead me to believe that a necron is a robotic shell with a neural photocopy of a living being's brain. The thing is that the necrons and c'tan have nothing to do with the warp and c'tan themselves consume bio electricity not souls. Thus it is highly doubtful that a necrontyr's soul was grafted to the necron machine. Instead they managed to produce a sentient mind without a soul (but not a negative soul like a pariah) by copying the neural network of the necrontyr brain into a digital format.

The necron pariah on the other hand is something even more bizarre. I doubt it's a true pariah (ie a negative warp soul) because of the dissociation of the necrons from the warp (the pariahs wouldn't work if they managed to cut the warp off from realspace anyway). They may actually be the first example of technology mimicking the effects of a pariah soul. Afterall, the warp drive on a space ship does a similar thing to a soul - punctures the veil between realspace and the warp. Why not a device that can create an inverted warp space.

Hellebore

I like Hellebores explanation but I have to ask: If you copy a personality to hard drive and inserted it to another body what (if anything) actually makes it different from the "original" person?

In my campaign I'll be portraying Necrons as a real race of real beings whose minds "live" as digital information stored in the Nodal Command Network (hereafter NCN). When the necron tomb activates it starts to download the minds into necron living metal bodies and ranks them, giving each necron a bit different "rights" into NCN. Thus lords will have much more information than normal warriors and so on.

The reason why necrons get more "robotic" once they are killed over and over again is that they were not built to be robots in the start. the "programming" is still a copy of an actual, once-living, creature. Once the necrons body is "killed" the NCN will pull out the last backup copy of the personality, it into new body and update it with current information. However, quite clearly the new copy will realize that he was "killed" and that he is a copy of the original. He can review the records and see what happend to the last copy that was killed and what mistakes he should avoid and so on. He learns. But, and this is a big but, the more and more necron gets killed and copied the more and more detached it becomes when it starts to realize that it can't really die a final death... ever. They simply start to *care* less for their living metal bodies and the endless war...

In my campaign the young (not killed much) necron is filled with zeal to feed its gods, learn to kill new races and do things. The old (killed over and over again) necron is not any less intelligent, but when it wakes up in new body its like "Oh ****... I don't want to do this anymore. Why can't you just shelf me to NCN, I'm too old for this."

A young necron Flayed One could infiltrate as a human and still has zeal to learn the human language and customs and whatnot. Old one *could*, in theory, do that but everyone knows it doesn't care enough for the possible consequences of failure anymore since all it wants is to kill or get killed quickly so it can go back to rest in NCN.

In 40k the difference is the soul and its connection to the mind. Even pariahs have a presence in the warp even if it's a negative presence but a digital copy of a mind is wholly a realspace construct, there is no interaction or connection to the warp. In reality there wouldn't be one.

I wrote up a theory on the way souls function a little while ago in an attempt to reconcile how you can have multiple types of sentience, psychic power and soul:

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.

The above is not official but I think it covers all the bases and provides some interesting revelations - my favourite being the warp drive as artificial sentience engine.

Anyway, in the context above the necron 'mind' would have a wide apeture but a low or nonexistent resonance (just like the c'tan and probably deliberately designed that way by the c'tan when creating them), cutting it off from any warp reflection.

Hellebore

In much the same way as AIs and 'The Castigator' reflect into the warp, as Machines (and swords) and Ships can be possessed...I think the Necrons (and C'tan) do have 'reflections' in the warp...just 'early' ones. Not terribly developed, not conjoined with any sort of resonant part (unlike the Old Ones, I assume, who first 'constructed' mega-images, like that of the Emperor's...but that's me guessing), but still there.

I disilike referencing Soulstorm, but one upside was that the DE reflect on the Necrons as possessing meagre, almost (or entirely) worthless souls?

As for deterioration, I suppose it to be a gaining of insanity. Each time you die/resurrect, you are faced with more insanity. Footsoldiers die regularly, therefore go insane and only really their 'robotic' will enslaved to their masters remain.

Those who die less (lords, nobles, aristocracy who can avoid the main fight) therefore are a bit more...sane.

Whether they adore the C'tan as gods, or simply a means to an end (purveyors of Halo Objects...?) is really up to your view on the individual. The Necrontyr as a fast, quick-generationed and dynamic society...would they have had homogenous views on things? I like to imagine a fair ol' whack of variety. At least the Necrons in 40k sorely need it.

Now, as to Halo Objects, we agree, right? Turns folks into Necrons, of sorts.

Necrons are supposed to have the warp as their anathema. It was the reason the C'tan went to sleep in the first place was when the Old Ones brought in the Eldar to fight for them and the Eldar were using their powers to pretty much wipe out Necrons who didn't have a defense.

Also, there are several Necron Lords that can do the hide in plain sight and inflitrate as the Deceiver only does it for very large ideas.

DrgnScorpion said:

Part of the "Big Picture" in my campaign is the C'Tan vulnerability to warp... They needed to stay hidden for the time it took for human kind to develop Pariahs and psyk-out warheads and all that.