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Post by Kage2020 on Jun 12, 2004 5:51:48 GMT -5
One of the concepts that is being bandied around in various forums at the moment (not just on ASP) is the concept of Necron sentience... Just how 'clever' are they? What remains of the original Necrontyr that was transferred into the necrodermis? What is the difference between a normal Necron and a Necron Lord, the former sometimes being described as an automaton and the latter as retaining sentience? I suggest the following: all Necron 'engrams' were transferred into a central core as archives. These are 'decompressed' into a Necrodermis/body as well as the archive being frequently updated from the 'RV'... The overall gist is that with the frequent copying and modification, transmission errors are introduced. In essence, the individual begins to lose what they were... moving from an individual into something lesser... Well, just a quick post to see if I can tempt people back to this board. Maybe even Zoom if he can get his finger out of his work, as it were... Kage
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Post by malika on Jun 12, 2004 6:04:24 GMT -5
I like the idea that the Necron would still be able to think and still have his memories from when he was a Necrontyr, but that he has no control over his body what so every. So he is in eternal torment, watching his body kill and destroy so many. Wait...this doesnt have that much to do with what you're saying right?
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Post by TheGlyphstone on Jun 13, 2004 4:28:30 GMT -5
I like the idea of the lesser 'Crons being automatons, while the Lords retain some sentience. My Necron army's fluff was tied to this, being led by a Lord who retained more sentience than normal and found a way to sever himself/itself from the control of the C'tan.
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Post by ZoomDog on Jul 18, 2004 17:33:57 GMT -5
I'm also for the idea of Lords being capable of conscious thought. I liken them to Liches, Vampires or Necromancers within classic Undead armies; they are the sole intelligence of their force and command it with total control. However they are not fully aware as humans are; the idea of disobeying a C'Tan, for example, or allying with Chaos, just doesn't occur to them. They don't think 'No, that's a bad idea', they never think it in the first place. It's like when the Transferrence took place, certain parts of their mind were removed, leaving only the bits the C'Tan thought neccessary. In Warriors this would be minimal, things like 'obey', 'kill', 'protect' and so forth. As one moves up the ranks of Necrons; Destroyers, Immortals, more consciousness is left intact, until the Lord is reached up the top of the Chain of Command with almost full sentience.
Kage's idea of 'transmission errors' is an interesting one; it adds to the idea that the lower Necrons are, socially speaking, the 'dumber' they will be. Necron Warriors, for example, are alot more likely to be destroyed on the battlefield then Immortals or Lords, thus they will have been 'copied' more, hence more 'errors'.
The theory that even Lords are nothing but mindless automatons doesn't work for me in the slightest, there are only 4 C'Tan, and (IMO) hundreds, if not thousands, of Lords. The C'Tan would not be able to give each Lord specific orders, they would give them a general strategy and let them work out the specifics for themselves. It would be much more efficient if the Star Gods could give orders like 'Search those 2 Sectors for Pariahs' or 'Destroy any Eldar that enter this sub-sector', then let the Lords work out specifics such as numbers, tactics, force movements etc. Like I just mentioned in another Necron thread, the C'Tan are full of themselves and their over inflated sense of god-hood. They would never do little things like ordering their troops around on the battlefield when they have more important things to worry about, like the destruction of all other empires in the galaxy.
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Post by Sojourner on Jul 18, 2004 23:42:56 GMT -5
I'd give them a sort of proto-sentience. Capable of 'explaining' their thoughts and so on, but not inclined to. Very very difficult to get them to learn and so on. No creativity, and seem to think on a completely different level.
A bit like 'Hugh' the Borg in Star Trek, just after they cut him from the collective - responsive, but a pretty much empty mind.
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 19, 2004 1:00:57 GMT -5
Actually, enforced 'programming' of the Necrontry during the "Transference" is actually a rather intriguing approach to modified sentience of the Necrons... That idea could really be developed when coupled with the nature of computer archives, etc...
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Post by Destecado on Jul 20, 2004 5:40:07 GMT -5
Rather than being programed to be semisentient what about it being a case of the capacity of the hardware. If you look at the different types of Necrons, you will see that there is definitely am increase in sophistication as you progress up the command structure. Necron warriors are meant to be cannon fodder. Such units are made to be mass produced and easily repairable or cannibalized for parts. It is therefore reasonable to assume that production time would not be wasted on a full download of Necrontyr memeory into a given warrior body. Just the basics would be necessary to have the machine able to walk and fire a weapon. The way I view it is possibly as an outgrowth of how the culture of the Necrontyr existed before their change to Necrons. In my view, there was probably a ruling elite ( techno-religious elite). If you wish to use the old egyption model (on which the Necrons seem loosely based) You had the pharao his family and the priests. below them would be the army and merchants and then your everyday citizens. Based on their short life span, your are probably looking at some form of monarchy or hereditary rule, where young nobles are trained from an early age to rule. This would give you a class of elites that sat above the general populace. When the change took place, this class structure would probably carry over into the Necrons as well. Little or no regard is given for the average citizen by the ruler. they are merely there to serve him. The same would go for your average Necron warrior. Why give them intelligence or the ability to think beyond what their lord commands them to do? The full memories of the Necrontyr used to provide the operating engram for the warriors might be in a database somewhere on a Tomb World, but it probably serves as nothing more than an archive. Only the Necron Lord and the higher models of Necron (his court) need have intelligence. The others are merely kept as mindless zombies. Another thought that arises about the transferance of Necrontyr into Necrons is the idea of an afterlife for the ruling class of the Necrontyr. Extending the idea of the Necrons being similar to the ancient egyptians, what if the lower classes of the necrontyr were pressed into service, to serve the Necron Lord in his next life.
Withing the tombs of the pharaos, there are symbolic representations of people and objects that would be used i the next life. In China, the first Chinese Emperor had an entire army of terracota soldires buried with him. Perhaps the Necrontyr rulers just took it a step further and took their peole with them.Edited purely for arrogant adoption of gol... erm, yellow... as "Kage Voice". Nothing else to see here... (And, yes, know that it is entirely arbitrary!)
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Post by ZoomDog on Jul 21, 2004 16:28:24 GMT -5
Rather than being programed to be semisentient what about it being a case of the capacity of the hardware. I would say that would be a result of the 'reduction' of their minds. If we go with Kage's 'archive' theory, the mind of the Necrontyr would've been transferred from it's body to the archive, where the 'unneccesary' parts, such as love, ambition etc would've been removed. They likely then would've taken a look at how much room was needed and created the Warrior body in response. Or alternatively, they created the body first, capable of only containing the wanted thoughts. Then when the mind was transferred to the Necron body, the surplus parts of the mind were lost as there was no-where for them to be stored. Given that the Lord is the highest ranking Necron, I would say that the military leaders were placed very highly within Necron society. Given that they were a very angry race, focussed on wiping out the Old Ones, I would say this was pretty likely. Unless, of course, there is an even higher form of Necron we haven't seen. Perhaps the great Necrontyr military minds were transferred to the Lords we know, but the leaders of their society, the techno-religious elite, were granted bodies of their own, some sort of 'ruler' Necron. These Necrons would sit within highly fortified Tombs and direct their Lords to command their armies, while other Necrons were in charge of other fields, such as research, maintenance etc. It really depends on how militarised the Necrons are; are they solely a military force, created by the C'Tan to serve as soldiers? Or are they servants of many different natures, scientists, analysts, warriors. Exactly. They obviously had the technology to transfer more of their minds across, with the Lords and Immortals, but they just didn't need to do it. The C'Tan don't appear to me as the sentimental type. I would imagine that the memories of the Warriors would be seen as usless data and deleted to make room for more important information. An interesting point, with the difference being that the Necron Lords are themselves slaves to a higher being. The Pharoahs were considered to be Gods. Also remember that the Necrontyr didn't think that they were going into the afterlife, they were told (and believed) that they were being made Immortal by the power of the StarGods. I would say that many of them believed that life would continue as normal, without the mortality.
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Post by Destecado on Jul 22, 2004 5:26:01 GMT -5
I still think that the whole "star god" idea of the C''tan was a sham precipitated by the ruling class of the Necrontyr. If I rememebr correctly from the fluff, the Necrontyr were fighting the Old Ones before the C'tan came on the scene.
Before the appearance of the C'tan, the war with the Old Ones was going badly for the Necrontyr. The C'tan might have been originally designed as a super weapon to continue the war with the Old Ones. They were portrayed as gods perhaps as a moral boost for their people.
Perhaps it was explained away that their sun flaired in the manner that it did, because the "star god" was angered by their actions. Remember it was the Necrontyr that originally made the Necrodermis of the c'tan. It may have originally been a prison, but unfortunately, the Necrontyr rulers could not control what they had let loose on the galaxy.
Eventually the C'tan may have come to dominate the Necrontyr culture and taken over the war....not to defeat the Old Ones, but to feed their hunger for souls. Once the old ones were out of the way...and most sentient life with them, the C'tan may have begun to war and feed on each other.
As the C'tans that enslaved them began to die, perhaps the Necron Lords were again free to act. They may have fought the C'tan and those of their people still held under their sway. This is not to say that they did not also fight those races previously supported by the Old Ones.
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Post by RascalLeader on Sept 24, 2004 21:00:40 GMT -5
I think necrons would fully retain their sentaince however the think is that they have been trapped in artifical bodies for too long. They have little will to do anything now but the one core thing they have been doing for thousands of years, which is the bidding of their gods.
Since their race is very short lived suddenly becoming imortal would have some very strange effects on them. They would not have the intellectual capacity to deal with this huge shift. The longer they live the more they would come disinchanted with their new meger existance which offers very little for them.
They will have been around so long that they no longer really care about any personal concern, since their who existance as necrons has become one of duty. Since they can't really be destracted by biological urges they have nothing else to do.
So here they are now; uncaring, unfeeling machines that now only do what they are told. Even the necron lords should be hollow echos of their formor selfs.
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Post by Kage2020 on Sept 25, 2004 17:58:12 GMT -5
Here's a question... Why is the basic form that allows the C'tan to do so much so lacking with the Necrons? They have the technology such that the Necondermis of the basic 'warriors' would be able to produce all but everything that 'flesh' could... sensations, etc.
All that really keeps the Necrons as they are is GW fiant and the whole undead/robot imagery...?
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Post by RascalLeader on Sept 25, 2004 19:17:34 GMT -5
Even with their techology, putting themselves within a metel shell will isolate them from what it is to be a living breathing being.
Everything that makes up our existance; the feeling of heat, air in our lungs, our pain receptors they would not have. They might be able to have all those things simulated for them, but in the end what is the point?
For all intents and purposes they are the undead since they no longer live, they only exist.
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Post by Kage2020 on Sept 26, 2004 8:21:45 GMT -5
There is no reason that, for the most part, sensation could not be transmitted by their technology... The assumption of 'cold metal shell' is just that, an assumption. Though, admittedly, one born out of the 'image' of the Necrons...
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Post by RascalLeader on Sept 30, 2004 21:05:51 GMT -5
There is no reason that, for the most part, sensation could not be transmitted by their technology... The assumption of 'cold metal shell' is just that, an assumption
My point was that just because it can be does not mean they want it to be. After all if you could switch off your sence of pain after you pulled a musle or broke your arm you would. The same applys here; they would get rid of all the sences they did not need. When trapped inside a metel shell what sences would you need?
Their is also the problem that while they can feel things like presure against their metalic skin it would not trigger the same stimulation in their brain. It would mean very little to them then, and they would become very detached. Even if they have somesort of positronic brain that is very close to how they orginally were it would still not be the same. It would not have the same fluidity of reaction.
I am perhaps not putting it very well so here is parallel: Its kind of like the difference between signaling someone with a torch in the distance and wavining it infront of their face. The one with the light may be doing the same thing but it will invoke a different intensity of feeling in the recipient's eyes.
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Post by Kage2020 on Oct 2, 2004 18:36:19 GMT -5
My point was that just because it can be does not mean they want it to be. I draw your attention to your argument, above. You were talking about how the transition to the 'necrodermis' was a removal of sensation... Their is also the problem that while they can feel things like presure against their metalic skin it would not trigger the same stimulation in their brain. First off, that's assuming things a tad too much. For example, I doubt that the Necrons have an organic brain. Secondly, if they can transfer the 'mind' in the first place it kind of follows that they would understand how to 'program' it... It would mean very little to them then, and they would become very detached. That doesn't quite work as a substantial argument. It would not have the same fluidity of reaction. It seems to me that you're buying into the image and letting that shade your arguments, which is fair enough. At present I cannot see a reason to agree with you on this front, though.
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