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Post by Caladors on Mar 10, 2004 18:25:46 GMT -5
I like the idea of them being dorment this is very good cause it stops them from being a major risk thing where there is a huge center of them but i do think that they should have someone working for them in the shadows and in the open.
I think perhaps an awakening fleet very small simliar to scouting fleet ment to collect the needed power to allow them to awaken them.
also there agents within the adptus mechainus working to awaken them and keep them serect. Inquisitors trying to set up barriors to make sure that no-one goes near them to keep the giants sleeping. the eldar having a great debate on what to do and rouge elements trying to do something making them an interesting small part of the sector but not a large epic or bfg way.
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Jul 9, 2004 11:16:01 GMT -5
Not to reawaken dead threads, but I had an interesting (IMHO) idea on this that sort of gets you the best of both worlds. Dormant works better than active - the Necron are one story in the sector, not the story. Still, I prefer the Necrons to be doing something purposeful, not just aimless testing defences. So:
There is indeed a small Necron fleet active in the area, but it is careful not to be seen by anyone who is going to survive the encounter. This has contributed greatly to the 'haunted' region rumours.
There is also a dormant tomb world in the sector. It is not only dormant it's missing. The Eldar and Old Ones blew up every Necron tombworld they could find in this area, but the retreating Necrons hid one tomb so well that even the Necron'tyr themselves can't find it again - the records of its location and reactivation codes were lost during their slumber.
So, a number of Shrouds and warriors are quietly searching all over the sector looking for the clues to find it again. Artefact sites, imperial records and research facilities, museums, anything that might hold a clue could be raided. All the while Shrouds scan planets for Necron energies and send down warriors to investigate further.
The Eldar records show that they clearly missed a tomb world somewhere in this sector, but they were never able to find it. They've been keeping a quiet eye on the Mon'Keigh's progress in the sector ever since in case they trip over them.
The Inquisition have noticed Necron raids in the sector followed an unusual pattern. They just don't know why yet, but are investigating further. The Ad Mech may know more than they're telling, but won't admit to knowing anything about the tomb or how to open it.
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Post by CELS on Jul 9, 2004 11:35:15 GMT -5
Parden my ignorance, but what are shrouds? And how can Necron'tyr be searching for the tombworld? I thought the race was originally known as Necrontyr, and then reborn as Necrons when the C'tan gave them their new form. Sounds like a potentially interesting idea though, even if I don't understand it
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Jul 9, 2004 12:00:15 GMT -5
Shroud class escorts - the nasty crescents-all-over shaped guys that are very fast, very hard to track or scan and that carried out the raid on the Noctis Labyrinthus site on Mars.
Fair enough, they're all Necrons now and have been for a looooong time - my bad because the terms are not interchangeable.
Basic idea's pretty simple: a Necron tomb facility hid itself completely to avoid destruction when the tide of the War in Heaven turned against them in the Anargo sector. The C'tan went into hibernation to wait out the Enslaver Plague. Time began seriously to pass.
The first of the remaining C'tan wake up and realize they are missing something. They know they last felt it in the Anargo sector.
Something must have stopped stopped working while the C'tan and the Necrons slept, because one of their tomb worlds hasn't reawoken and isn't responding to their commands. The arcane technology that hid the tomb from the Eldar and Old Ones is now hiding it from its builders. If the communication links have failed, maybe the tomb's automated defences did too... so the Necrons are quietly trying to find their lost tomb without tipping anyone off.
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Post by Sojourner on Jul 13, 2004 2:53:20 GMT -5
I like this idea very much. Now we just need to know why it was hidden...
Oh. Oh...
On Tir'asur, perhaps?
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 13, 2004 3:03:24 GMT -5
I'm going to have to revive this concept in the "Heart of Anargo" thread in which my original intention was to have an Old One 'experiment' to remove the Necron tombworld from 'this universe' went horribly wrong. Kind of. Rather than completely remove them it held them partially 'away', with subsequent fragmentation to create the protodimensional 'stones' mentioned previously. These were, originally, meant to be linked to artefacts that could be "switched off"... This would be consistent with this idea (i.e. unable to send communication signals, etc.) without being too contradictory with what has already been mentioned. Furthermore, numerous people would debate that the eldar maintain significant records from the time of the War in Heaven... admittedly, they would have subsequently come over many of the Tomb Worlds, but with the concept of 'Heart of Anargo' there is some doubt that they would actually know what specifically causes the phenomenon... And, no, the Tomb World is not ever going to be on Tir'asur!
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Post by ZoomDog on Jul 18, 2004 17:13:05 GMT -5
A very interesting idea Ernest. I'm a little unsure as to if it could happen, but we can work on that. My main problem is I'm a bit wary of the idea that the Necrons could 'lose' one of their own tombs. The popular theory at the moment is that each TombWorld is part of a galactic network; each Tomb is constantly connected with the others (similar to the AdMech's network of ForgeWorlds, but a lot more efficient I'd imagine.) I would say that as much as they tried to hide it, the Necrons would not disconnect it from the other Tombs as it plays such a vital role in their 'lives' (using the term loosely ). If this was the case then every Tomb in the galaxy would know it's location, and even if something happened to it, the other Necrons would still know where it is. There is the possibility that, as part of it's secrecy, the Tomb was not connected to the Network, in which case I'm sure the other Tombs would have extensive backup plans on how to find it using alternative methods. One possibility is that the Necrons were experimenting with their new 'hidden' technologies (as they were trying to hide from psychic races, perhaps it was an early or modifed version of their Pylons), and something went wrong. Not even Necrons are perfect . This could've cut off their connection to the other Tombs, or destroyed/disabled the 'backup' plans they had for locating the Tomb. IMO the majority of Necron Tombs still haven't awoken; the 40K Galaxy has only seen a portion of the Necrons in existance. Also, I doubt the C'Tan would notice the loss of one of their Tombs. I prefer the idea that each Necron Lord is in control of a number of Tombs. The C'Tan would say something like 'Necron Lord Tal'ec, send your forces to location 'x' and destroy the Ork force gathering there', where the Lord would then gather his forces from the Tombs to conduct the attack. The C'Tan are immensly powerful beings with an ego the size of the Dyson Sphere, they wouldn't worry themselves over every little Tomb under their control. Things like finding a missing Tomb would be up to the Lord (and this also cuts the C'Tan out of the ASP ). This idea also increases the importance of the Necron Lords within Necron 'society', something that I'm eager to achieve. And Kage, can you post a link to the Heart of Anargo thread? I couldn't find it. Cheers.
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Jul 19, 2004 10:59:00 GMT -5
I agree that most tombworlds are still dormant, but how do they get woken up? Does Necron technology have a Wake-on-LAN capability or does somebody have to throw a switch? This ties into a huge question about the Necrons - how do the C'tan communicate/control the Lords? It's fairly clear the Necrons are programmed/designed to have no choice but obey, but how do they get their orders? I think (but don't really have any fluff source) that all warriors (at least locally) are connected into a network and suggest it is likely connected to the theorized teleport inhibitor that controls when they phase out. But do the C'tan access this network or do they simply bark orders? This may be a bit of both in that I'd be amazed if C'tan couldn't "talk" in radio waves (or gamma rays or whatever) given their nature.
To give orders on a larger scale (interstellar), do C'tan need to be in a sarcophagus on a ship or tomb? For that matter, are C'tan unable to send messages across the stars except by pony express (they don't have astropaths)? They have supraluminal realspace engines, but does this give them FTL communications capability?
As to losing contact, Necron technology is incredibly impressive just to be working after such a long time - is it that unlikely that at least one hive stopped functioning? Perhaps an earthquake caused a cave in, killing a number of tomb spyders. There weren't enough to both repair the massive complex and keep each other working properly and over the coming millions of years, things slowly started to fail, including the location beacon/activation system.
I agree there's a problem with no Necron or C'tan having a record of where the bloody thing was in the first place. If it was an experimental facility, it might have been deliberately kept off the net while testing was underway - or the testing interfered with the network.
Here's a tech that would resolve some of these problems - we know Wraiths and C'tan can phase through solid matter. What if the tomb, wherever it is, is or was out of phase, and went to sleep that way?
Sixty million years later, they try the key and nothing happens. They do a scan and the tomb isn't there - it's not just out of phase, it's completely missing. The gravitational coupler failed at some point and the whole tomb complex flew into empty space as the planet moved in its orbit leaving it behind. Without knowing when this happened over the last sixty million years, the tomb could be anywhere, floating and out of phase. More, if the gravitic coupler was repaired by the Tomb Spyders or if the phase generator failed, then the tombworld probably crashed somewhere. So they're doing a search for all reports of space ghosts and strange occurrences (who knows what a sixty million year old malfunctioning experimental city-sized phase shifting field could do), as well as doing scans of various worlds.
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Post by ZoomDog on Jul 19, 2004 15:24:50 GMT -5
I agree that most tombworlds are still dormant, but how do they get woken up? My opinion is that there are a few ways. The first would obviously be if an intruder is detected. However, this would not always wake the entire Tomb up. I believe that as the C'Tan went into stasis, they picked a length of time to 'sleep' for. During this time, if a Tomb was ever disturbed it's guardians would awaken, deal with the intruder, then go back into stasis. Once the time chosen had elapsed, then a select number of Tombs would awaken, and they would scout out the galaxy, see what races are around, and do generaly recon work. That is the phase we are currently in. The Lords that are currently awake would most likely have the authority to wake up more of their forces if needs be. One question here is what happens if a Tomb is disturbed. Do it's defenders stay awake after dealing with it? If the C'Tan wanted those Necrons awake, then they would've awoken with the rest of the Tombs. On the other hand, maybe the process of putting the Necrons into stasis is a long and energy consuming one, so it's more efficient just to leave them active. An interesting question. I would agree that all Necrons are constantly connected to their own Tombs, and their Tombs are all connected. I would be against this communication being instantaneous, but it would be much faster then Imperial inter-stellar communications. On the matter of the C'Tan, there are a couple of ideas. Firstly, they could verbally give all their orders. This would require a Necron of some sort in close proximity (perhaps a specialised 'translator' Necron), or maybe any Necron will do (although I don't really like the idea of a C'Tan telling a basic Warrior it's plans, then the Warrior letting the Lords know). The other idea is, like you say, that the C'Tan sends off signals of some kind that a Necron picks up, then relays to the Network. Again, this may require a 'translator' Necron. Personally I prefer the image of the first, a C'Tan sits on his thrown, surrounded by his faithful Necron servants, then it bellows it's commands, the Necrons quickly and efficiently sending the orders to the relevant parties. On the other hand, again like you say, it would be well within the power of the C'Tan to send it's commands via another medium, and likely much more efficient. I'm inclined to say yes (in a Tomb or Ship, not necessarily physical inside their sarcophagus), but this brings up the problem of C'Tan on the battlefield. Is it incapable of giving fresh orders to the troops around it? Perhaps this is where we can merge the two methods of communicating. Onboard their ships, and within Tombs, the Necrons have the required equipment/Necron to translate a C'Tans 'radiowave' orders (for lack of a better term). These would be the primary orders for the Lords, large amounts of information relating to a galactic strategy. While on the battlefield, they are unable to use this form of communication and must resort to 'verbal' orders. These wouldn't be nearly as efficient, but are sufficient to give orders like 'take that hill' or 'hold this flank'. I highly doubt a mere earthquake would be strong enough to do damage to a Tomb, they would've built these things strong enought to withstand planetary bombardments. But like you say, 60 million years is a long time, and things do go wrong. I would ask why would they need to? There are not traitors within Necron ranks, and I highly doubt any other race, at that time, had the technology to 'hack' into the Necron Network. Now that's an interesting idea. The Tomb could exist within solid rock in that state, or even within a molten core, thus making it extremely hard to enemies to find, and then reach, it. I like this idea better then the 'stil floating out of phase' one; it gives other races a chance to interract with it. Also, if the Tomb had been floating for 60 million years then there's no telling how far it could've flown, perhaps it's near Sol by now. They would have to have some indication that it's in the Anargo Sector, perhaps just before the Tomb 'crashed' it sent off a brief signal, one that gave it's general location but not exact co-ordinates. I'm going to have to find the Heart of Anargo thread so I can see what Kage and Destecardo proposed in there.
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Post by ErnestBorgnine on Jul 19, 2004 17:20:38 GMT -5
The phase technology could (and likely would) in and of itself prevent (or at least problematize) communication - after all, any photons or other transmission or energy should be out of phase too. This may be why the device was experimental - you'd need a way to keep the phased tombworlds in contact (most obviously by having them all on the same phase offset). Either the technology was too finicky or they simply ran out of time to retrofit the tombworlds before it was time to go to sleep.
Another question is whose tombworld this is. Another possible reason why the tech isn't ubiquitous (if it were we wouldn't have Necron artifacts and tomb sites being found by unlucky AdMechs) might be that it belongs to Dragon or Outsider and all the tombs we've seen so far are those under Deceiver/Nightbringer command.
On a related note, it has never really been established whether a star god can hijack another's soldiers/worshippers, or if the Necrons even have patrons or serve all C'tan equally. The latter appeals to me, and may be the case in that the Great Work is a common interest and of such importance the internecine strife of the C'tan and Deceiver's games are never allowed to interfere with it.
While it may at first glance seem odd the C'tan wouldn't use their Necron servants in their battles with one another, I wonder whether any Necron or Necron weapon would affect a C'tan at full power - they may not fight over followers because they're not worth the effort and they'd just give the same orders anyhow. The problem with that is that Deceiver would use this to his advantage, and Dragon and Outsider have tech the others don't seem to have (Dyson sphere, for a start; whatever's on Mars) - they don't seem to share anything else, so why followers?
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Post by Destecado on Jul 20, 2004 4:35:57 GMT -5
As Kage mentioned earlier, I highly recommend that you review the Heart of the Sector thread. It contains a discussion about the possibility of the Old Ones creating a prison for the Necrons within the Sector. This could be the placement of the missing tomb world. Unlike the other tomb worlds that are known by the Necrons to be destroyed, this one simply stopped communicating and no trace of it can be located. There might be some Necron ships in the area trying to track it down, but at the moment I do not see there being a large active presence of Necrons in the Sector. Another thing to rememebr is that the Necrons are not some monolithic force facing down the other races. they have their own internal strife and factions. At one time there were many more C'tan than the few that still exist. While it is true that the Eldar and Old Ones fought and killed some of them, they also probably warred among themselves. They would not have fough over their Necron Servants, but over the one commodity that all of them needed to continue to survive...souls. As the number of sentient races began to dwindel and with no one else to feed on the C'tan might have turned to feeding on each other. This might be the real reason why the Necrons went into Hybernation (not far off from the fluff). There would of course be other factions of the Necrons who went into hybernation unwillingly (shut down). It may be that the necron mind at least for the standard Necron exists within a polymatrix. This would be a gestalt mind where each individual Necron is part of a higher group mind. Information would therefore be easily passed from one unit in the matrix to another. Part of the reason that the Necrons phase out when they reach a certain level of damaged units may be that the gestalt begins to break down when it loses a certain number of units.
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Post by ZoomDog on Jul 21, 2004 16:10:16 GMT -5
The phase technology could (and likely would) in and of itself prevent (or at least problematize) communication - after all, any photons or other transmission or energy should be out of phase too. I prefer the idea that they can still communicate with out of phase Necrons, otherwise Wraiths would constantly be going in and out of contact with the rest of the Necron army. I have nothing to back this up with, just personal preference. The general consensus, and one that I agree with, is that the Dragon was the most technologically minded of the C'Tan, and as such he would be the most likely to create a 'phasing tomb'. It would also strengthen the reasoning for the presence of the Dragon Cult in the sector, if we do end up including them. I can't really see the Necrons continuing with the Great Work while their Gods are fighting it out. If the NightBringer wanted to take out another C'Tan, I'm sure that he'd use whatever forces he had to help him, mainly the Necrons under his control. So I'm of the opinion that during the stage where C'Tan fought C'Tan, there were great battles between the Necron Legions. I would say so, Necron weapons are much more powerful then the weapons of today (today being the 41st millenium). Also the whole point of Gauss weapons is that they can take anything out, given enough time (and enough of them ), by slowly destroying layer after layer of the target. It's possible that a C'Tan would be highly resistant to this, it's Necrodermis likely regenerated as it was destroyed, but given enough Gauss fire I'm sure some damage could be done. I would actually say it was a large benefit of the whole Civil War between the C'Tan. The common belief is that when a C'Tan consumed another C'Tan, it grew more powerful. Another benefit would be that the Necrons of the consumed C'Tan would now be patronless, and most likely absorbed into the forces of the victorious C'Tan. So as well as growing more powerful personally and having a most enjoyable meal, the C'Tan would increase the size of his Legions. As Kage mentioned earlier, I highly recommend that you review the Heart of the Sector thread. Cheers for the link, I'll go give it a read now. Agreed. If the Necrons were desperate for more troops they be awakening the rest of their inactive Tombs. No need to rush finding one lost one. True, yet currenlty the C'Tan are realising that they need each other. The Necron codex says something like "The Deceiver realised that it needed the other C'Tan". With so many enemies in the galaxy, the last thing the C'Tan need is to be fighting each other as well, and they're smart enough to realise that they need to work together in order to complete the Great Work. Of course, the Outsider might not realise this, being the insane monster that he is. I don't think the Eldar or Old Ones killed any of the C'Tan. The only confirmed way of killing a Star God currently is for it to be consumed by another. I think you mean 'essences'. That's the part of mortal beings that the C'Tan consume. When the Transferrence took place the C'Tan had a mighty feast as their consumed the essences of every Necrontyr in existance (unless they missed a few), and the souls were left to float. Also, the C'Tan do not need mortals to survive, they are still perfectly capable of living off stars. It's just that mortals taste a lot better. Again, they don't need sentient beings to survive. However, the C'Tan Civil Wars were created by hunger, if you will, as the C'Tan found out that the best feast to be had was other C'Tan. The StarGods starting fighting because they wanted to eat each other. Don't really like this idea sorry, it just makes them look like another Hive Mind. I prefer the idea that they are still individuals, but are constantly connected with each other. Of course, the individuality is variable, the Warriors would all be almost identical, for example, and would blindly follow their Lords orders. But I wouldn't say that they lose their ability to function if their numbers drop too low. The Phase Out rule exists to represent that when the Necrons suffer heavy casualties, they reason that the objective isn't worth it, and they pull out, possibly to return another day. They are still a scouting/raiding force, full-out battles are still out of their league.
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