Assuming you aren't one of those people who can dismiss the question with a simple "it doesn't matter, because I will never allow an Untouchable in ANY game of mine! [smirk]", is there a place for these rare, reviled, 1-in-a-billion people? Even in their own game, the rare character with this trait isn't necessarily likely to go far; I don't know what paths in Ascension are especially good for it, minusing playing an Assassin who somehow gets into the Culexus Temple (since all Culexus Assassins must have this trait), but it's unlikely any will reach Inquisitor status, and people playing it right are likely to be off put by the character enough to not give it promotions, as well it's own shot Fellowship can hinder good interaction, making him hard-pressed to be a team-player. What about outside Dark Heresy, though? Is there any fluff that supports how a Rogue Trader might collect one, and want to keep him around? While there are no Space Marines I know of who have this trait, could they want to keep a squishy around, due to his gift (Bleack Templars, maybe)? Stories involving them seem almost as rare as Blanks are purported to be, themselves.

Once you've persuaded your GM to let you play this, what's the best direction to point him/her? Short of saying "the one that can get him Unnatural Willpower (x2), and/or Fear (X), I am not certain. It's always been a character archetype I have been fond of, though (the little evil in me that wants to play something one really shouldn't, and see how far I can take it), so I am interested in the thoughts other open-minded people have had, or even used. Thanks much.

There are rules for untouchables/nulls on the game. It comes on Disciples of dark gods or on Radicals handbook. The most recents are on radicals, so I think that must be the good ones.

No, I know where to find them; I have both books that contain their write-up, and prefer Radical's -10 Fel one time to Disciple's cut Fel in half plan. My question was what's a good direction for them? What classes are best to sneak it into, and what should they seek to acquire (talents, allies, gear)? Other than the GM saying "okay, so lite on the psykers, heavy on the xenos", how good can they be, once you've cleared the hurdle of gettingt he GM to even allow such a character to be played?They are the social misfits of a game where teamwork is crucial. I didn't know what best options there were to make a "good" RP character out of it, and if they had potential in the other 40k games (Rogue Trader and Deathwatch; they aren't published there, but they are the same people, and the stats would be the same, but how useful could it be to a Rogue Trader, or Space Marines)?

As far as potential classes for all of those who are into the fluff of the WH40K game you will know that ALL nulls are genetic creations from LONG ago by the Ctan to combat the heavy use of psy abilities by their original enemies and the war with the eldar. The "Pariah" gene was implanted in humans by the Ctan as anti-psyker troops they planned on using in the war eons ago. As for their most fitting class type..that would be anti-psyker assassins in a DH campaign or for RT as a protective measure for the traders when dealing with anyone suspsected of using psy or psykers to influence trades etc ( or just to stunt the powers of any psy using xenos or human they encounter in their voyages..but also because nulls can mask the presence of anyone immediately around them ( their WP bonusx10m radius ) from being detected using any psy abilities ( refference the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies for that use their name was the distaff for the group of nulls who were subcontracted to Inquisitor Eisenhorn ) also their unique trait allows them to seriously intimidate anyone if they so chose. But as for if you have a particular idea for things..a null can play in any class except for ecclesiarchy ( they are not allowed to have any faith based anything due to the trait and the ecclesiarchy dont desire nulls due to it inhibiting any of their special faith based abilities as well as fellowship based skills ( due to their discomforting presence ) and as for being able to achieve rank of Inquisitor...i dont see why not ( though i will say that alot of his fellow inquisitors WONT like them around due to many of the lord inquisitors being psykers themselves..the presence of a null is physically painfull to a psyker in close proximity,,,,As for an RT game...id say any that does not require psy abilities....especially Void Master.

OK I'm confused about something. The War in Heaven was 60 million years ago, so the C'Tan could not have planted the Pariah gene in human beings (assuming there even is such a thing with the new Necron fluff). They would have to have implanted it in the terrestrial biota in some really really long-term plan.

EDIT: anti-psyker assassins are rather cliche. If I were going to use Nulls I would stick it on some other character class. The one in Einsenhorn was a Scum...

EDIT2: Most Clerics in DH don't have faith-based abilities at all, that is the province of a few rare alternate Ranks (three, I believe, one if you're not using Blood of Martyrs). A Null would be a very good cleric thematically (witch anathema).

There's an Untouchable in my current game.

He's a Darkholder Arbitrator recruited by a criminal and heretical Rogue Trader as part of his enforcers staff.

When this Rogue Trader and his crew finally faced the emperor's justice, the Untouchable (and a bunch of his fellows) were spared by an Inquisitor for helping him and their usefull skills.

That said, I think that Untouchable background best fit with Assassin (for allready known reasons) and Scums, in terms of credibility.

However, with a good/creative history, other careers fit either.

I think, for example, that an Untouchable Techpriest would be great.

In terms of gameplay, I've noticed that Untouchable are very usefull, to other PC, in melee.

Closer he is from a foe with Psy Rating or Warp instability, more chances have is comrades to survive the encounter.

So, even if the Untouchable Assassin is cliche, this is its best use.

Cobramax76 said:

Is that even canon any more - seeing as there's no mention of it in the new codex and Pariahs (The unit) have simply disappeared?

I've played an Untouchable Assassin in Ascension who was actually the daughter of an influential Inquisitor. She was a thoroughly messed-up and abrasive character, who happened to end up in the cell of a polypsykana Inquisitor, but it actually worked out incredibly well and made for some of the most memorable stuff I've done in roleplaying. Despite moving on, and that Inquisitor being declared excommunicate traitoris, I'm regularly considering badgering my GM to let me bring her back.

As far as the Ctan creating the pariah gene in humans for their war...that IS what is in many mentions of the fluff..as for any rewrites where they take it out....thats BS on their part..its been written and used/played on..so they can simply shove it...dont rewrite what works..As far as them removing the pariahs...incorrect...the necrons have a special unit they call the pariah for that exact reason.....they take a null they capture and turn them into the special pariah unit...hence why they are so rare even amon the necron forces. And the fluff has had several mentions of it in past..the same as the phase blades the callidus assassins use..are CTAN creations and the Ctan are IMMUNE to them ( reference a book in black library where a callidus assassin is sent to deal with a planetary governor who is getting too radical for the adeptus liking...the governor turns out to be the Ctan god the Deciever in disguise starting a war to further involve the races in infighting making it easier for his long term plans of invasion and annihiliation of the living races. The assassin tries using the phaseblade on him only to find out its useless and the ctan reveals himself for what he is right before killing and devouring her..it is also detailed if memory serves in that book about the pariah gene - ctan gloating and monologuing before killing her )

I take it you haven't read the new Necron codex?

Pariahs (The unit) don't exist any more and the C'tan are all "Dead" because the Necrons rebelled against them after the war in heaven. Pretty much everything from the old codex that related to the Red Harvest or the C'tan has been removed or heavily retconned. The Necrons, as a race, are completely different in mindset, motivation and general leadership.

You're certainly right about your references, but Games Workshop seem to have decided to bury that stuff. The C'tan Phase Sword rule no longer exists in regards to the "C'tan Shards" Necrons can field now (Essentially bound fragments of the C'tan's souls) and the fluff suggests that all the C'tan are thought to be, for all intents and purposes, dead.

C'tan shards are the excuse for all the already written fluff about the Deceiver and friends' exploits to still work. And as for the old necron fluff, it hasn't been retconned per ce. The old style Necrons are just now explained to be "faulty" tombworlds who haven't activated properly and still think the C'tan are alive and kicking.

The codex does say that some C'Tan may have survived the Necron's revolt and still be lurking out there somewhere.

I still don't know what they're going to do with the Void Dragon though.

VERY interesting...no i havent seen the new codex as yet ( got it but havent had chance to thumb though it yet due to many issues at work and family)Wonder what prompted them to totally reject everything to date pretty much and try to rewrite it all...( sounds alot like what wizidiots did to AD@D when they took it over in the original 3.0 ( while i did prefer their AC system...basically the rest of the game got nerffed in my opinion ) Why break something that works and what everyone already knows...makes no sense but oh well...I could potentially "buy" the whole short circuited tombworld thing as an explanation for a few..but not all..and as for their being "dead" yeah i agree there..

As for the Void Dragon...yeah im definitely waiting to see what happens there since the mechanicus worships it as their deity ( when another chaos daemon isnt posing as him that is ( ref the soul drinkers trilogy ) But according to the fluff ive read in the black library....the void dragon is currently sustaining itself on the mechanicus due to the "implants" they use..actually slowly siphoning their life energies to feed the dragon and "nurse" it slowly back to health..the dragon is biding its time till it decides to make its presence known...according to other fluff from the library...the emperor found out about it and was getting ready to deal with the dragon as soon as he completed his work on the reverse engineered eldar webway gate he was creating..AKA the Golden Throne but he retasked it to sustain him once horus pulled his stunt and also explains part of why some of the mechanicus would side with horus during the heresy ( perhaps the dragon "influenced" them to side with horus to give him the edge needed to defend the dragon inadvertently. The mechanicus actually do know about the dragon being there and have an ultra elite guard stationed at its cave to protect it, but they dont realize that it is a ctan...just a great sleeping dragon that gives them the gifts they know as technology ( it was the dragon that showed the first mechanicus how to survive after the decimation that occured on mars and all others when the warp storms began and the chaos gods awoke and began their domination war )

Trying to find consistency in 40k fluff is impossible. Authors of the Black Library and authors of the codexes are constantly contradicting one another. The Void Dragon is dead but he's alive in the centre of Mars. Only one Sister of Battle has fallen to chaos, and at the same time, entire orders of Sororitas have.There are no man-portable multi-lasers, but at the same time the marines use man-portable multi-lasers.

Consistency in 40k canon will never be achieved in the way writing for the universe works. Go with what you think works for your game, trying to obey the laws of all canon that's ever been written will just drive you insane.

Oh, and as for what probably prompted them to rewrite the fluff, it's probably because they wanted Necrons to have more flavour to them. Honestly a setting only needs one mindless CRUSH KILL DESTROY race, and we get that in the Necrons. I am a fan of the new Necron fluff, as it's much more useful to me for DMing the various 40k RPGs, but I can appreciate why people liked the old fluff.

Cobramax76 said:

Where do you read this? I have only readed Mechanicum....

Tom Cruise said:

Life and death are meaningless to creatures such as these...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

The retcon basically states that all the exploits of the Ctan in written lore are actually just shards of their full forms. I can accept that for the Deceiver and Nightbringer's exploits because they're relatively minor, but the retcon basically says that the void dragon is just a shard of the full creature, which seems a bit understated for the amount of power it appears to hold over technology.

Tom Cruise said:

I don't recollect the codex mentioning the VD (?). It could be one of the surviving C'tan.

Tom Cruise said:

That same retcon actually states that nobody knows for certain how many C'Tan remain, or how many escaped the Necrons' retribution and went into hiding (page 40, Codex Necrons, third paragraph - it basically states that while many C'Tan are enslaved by the Necrons, it doesn't account for the full Pantheon, and that even sources such as the archives on Alaitoc and the Black Library cannot conclusively determine how many C'Tan remain). It doesn't mention the Void Dragon at all. The C'Tan Shards exist because it's nigh impossible to actually kill a C'Tan (the Talismen of Vaul are said to be capable of such a feat, but we don't know for certain if they were ever actually used to that end before the war ended).

With that in mind, it's as likely that the entire Void Dragon hid on Terra to escape shattering and subjugation, was found by the Emperor and imprisoned beneath Mars.

The introduction of the C'Tan Shards as a concept resolves many issues with the prior "there are only four, and that's all" background, starting with the relatively feeble representations of them as models in the wargame, and ending with the inherently limiting dogma of saying that "only these four exist, and you can't do anything with two of them". Now we have access to a colossal and unknown pantheon of shattered C'Tan and their remaining intact brethren, scattered across the galaxy, which may or may not exist in coordination with the Necrons themselves (imagine a wounded, insane C'Tan on an isolated world, worshipped as a god by the locals, with no Necrons around except the ones who're hunting it to finish the job they started millions of years before - that plotline would have been utterly impossible under the previous background). It lets the C'Tan become more like the Cthulhoid god-monsters they've often been implied to be, yet with a decidedly 40k twist - a universe so hostile that not even gods are safe - without dragging the Necrons along with them into an abyss of miniondom (because that's all they were in the old Codex: minions to the C'Tan - they were battle droids to the C'Tan's Sith Lords), and allowing the Necrons in turn to become something on their own.

Man the Void Dragon sure has had a troubled life.

Wow, it's sort of funny how this thread has shifted to new Necrons. Overall, I think I preferred them before they went total Tomb Kings, as they seem to have now; did George Lucas get hired by GW, because it's a rare thing, at least to me, for that much retcon power to be flexed at a single time. Next thing you know, the Necorons will reveal that they have their own, powerful psykers, whose metal bodies are highly resistant to Perils, so they can reach deeper into the Warp safely, and harness great power.

As for the Void Dragon, I do believe that he is on Mars, being praised by the Mechanicus. As for getting there, I believe (no proof), that he was flying out toward Terra, prepared to obliterate this solar system with his cosmic breath, when one of the Talismans of Vaul was fired upon him. It's warp cannons tore his necrodermis to tatters, and he crashed upon Mars, in critical condition. The Warp Storm rolled in, socking the Sol System inside, and the Eldar/Old Ones couldn't come in, to finish the job. The C'Tan has been trapped on Mars, recovering, and finding new praisers, in the Mechanincus, ever since.

Far as I know, most of the fluff regarding how the Void Dragon got trapped in Mars refers to the Emperor actually subduing him and trapping him there. Although a lot of that fluff is in the form of Imperial legends and propoganda, so take it with a grain of salt.