Planet of Origin: Necrontyr, in the Halo stars regions of the Milky Way
The Necrontyr were a humanoid species which developed an advanced civilisation in the Halo stars regions, on the far reaches of the Milky Way galaxy. Short lived, their bodies blighted and consumed at an early
age due the terrible cancers and other illnesses linked to the high levels
of ionising radiation given off by their sun. They built in anticipation of their inhabitants' early demise, as
the living were only brief residents living in the shadow of the vast
sepulchres and tombs of their ancestors. They soon wandered off into
space, hopeful to realise their species' potential free from the lethal
energies of their birth star. Using stasis crypts and slow-moving
antimatter-powered torch-ships clad in the living metal known as
necrodermis to resist their millennia-long journeys. They made contact
with the Old Ones, a more advanced spacefaring species nearly immortal species, and were astonished to learn that another species
enjoyed such long lives while their own were so brutally short.
At the
time, the great Necrontyr houses were engaged in civil conflicts known as
the Wars of Secession. The Triarch, head of the Necrontyr, realised that
the only hope of unity laid in turning toward an external enemy. So they declared war on the Old Ones. The Necrontyr were pushed back to their homeworld where they
developed an utter hatred towards all other forms of intelligent life and
an implacable determination to avenge themselves upon their seemingly
invincible enemies. Then one of their probes investigating a dying star
discovered the C'tan entities of pure energy feeding upon the solar flares
and magnetic storms of bloated red giants that had little conception of
what the rest of the universe was. Diffused across areas larger than whole
planets, their minds could not perceive the material universe so the
Necrontyr sought their favour and oversaw the forging of physical shells
for them to occupy. Incomprehensible forces were compressed into the
living metal of the necrodermis bodies which the Necrontyr forged as the
full power of the C'tan at last found form. As the C'tan focused their
consciousnesses and became ever more aware of their new mode of existence,
they came to appreciate the pleasures available to beings of matter and
the other realities of corporeal life. The deliciously focused trickles of
electromagnetic energy given off by the physical bodies of the Necrontyr
all about them awakened a new hunger very unlike the one they had once
sated using the nourishing but essentially tasteless energies of the
stars. The powers of the C'tan manifested in the physical world were
almost god-like and it was not long before the C'tan were being worshiped
as the Star Gods the Necrontyr had named them. Perhaps they had been
tainted by the material universe they had become a part of, or perhaps
this had always been their nature even when they were bound to the suns
they fed upon, but they proved to be as cruel and capricious.
With the help of the C'tan, the Necrontyr stood ready to begin their
war against the Old Ones anew. The C'tan offered the Necrontyr a path to
immortality and the physical stability their race had always craved. Their
diseased flesh would be replaced with the living metal of necrodermis that
made up their Star Gods' own physical forms. The C'tan swarmed about the
biotransference sites, drinking in the torrent of cast-off life energy and
growing ever stronger as they glutted themselves on the spiritual detritus
of an entire species. It was only when the Silent King, head of the
Triarch. emerged from the bio-transference process and looked upon what
had become of his people that he saw the awful truth of the pact he had
made. In that moment, he knew that the price of physical immortality had
been the loss of his soul. The Necrons now enjoyed a unity that the
Necrontyr had never known, though it was achieved through tyranny and the
complete loss of individuality and emotion rather than by consent. The
biotransference process had embedded command protocols in every Necron
mind, granting the Silent King the unswerving loyalty of his subjects. He
grew weary of this burden but dared not sever the command protocols, lest
his subjects turn on him seeking vengeance for the terrible curse he had
visited upon them.
The Necron legions set out into the galaxy in their Tomb Ships. Planets were razed, suns extinguished and star
systems devoured by black holes called into being by the reality-warping
powers of the C'tan. The Old ones colonies were besieged and the species
they had nurtured became cattle for the obscene their hunger. As their
individual appetites for mortal life energies knew no bounds, the C'tan
ultimately began to fight amongst themselves. C'tan eventually devoured
C'tan, until only a few were left in the universe. The Old Ones used their
great scientific skills to genetically engineer servants with the
capability of channeling psychic power to defend themselves and nurtured
many potential warrior races, among which Eldars, Rashan and K'nib.
The Old Ones' psychically-empowered servant races spread across the
galaxy. The C'tan empire was shattered. For all the destruction they could
unleash, they were unable to stop the Old Ones advance but the growing
pains and collective psychic flaws of the younger races threw their
untapped psychically reactive energies into disorder. War, pain and
destruction were mirrored in the bottomless depth of the Sea of Souls. The
maelstroms of souls unleashed into the Immaterium by the carnage coalesced in the previously formless energies of the Warp.
The Warp gate network of the Old Ones was breached from the Immaterium.Ultimately,
beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp-spawned
perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were
defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. The survivors fled in deep
space.
The Silent King then led the
Necrons in revolt against the masters. As the C'tan were impossible to
destroy, each C'tan was sundered into thousands of smaller and less
powerful fragments, then each Shard was bound within a multidimensional
Tesseract Labyrinth, Though millions of Necrons had been destroyed, they
were once more in command of their own destiny.
The Eldar had survived where the Old Ones had not and the Necrons,
weakened by their expenditure of lives and resources in overthrowing the
rule of the C'tan, could not stand against them. It would take millions of
Terran years for the Eldar's power to fade, but what mattered is that the
Necrons would be there to take advantage of it. The Silent King ordered
the remaining Necron cities to be transformed into great tomb complexes
threaded with stasis-crypts. His final command to his people was to sleep
for 60 million years to awake ready to restore the Necron dynasties to
their former glory. Then he destroyed the command protocols by which he
had controlled his people for so long and took ship into the starless void
of intergalactic space, to find whatever measure of solace or penance he
could.
Source: Warhammer Universe
