Fans of Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 franchise will know that the setting is fertile breeding ground for all manner of horrors. From the dystopian awfulness of the galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man -an intolerant, xenophobic super-theocracy that makes Nazi Germany look like an Eden of liberal enightenment- to the H.R. Giger-inspired alien body-horror of The Tyranids, the exteme vision of a potential future it provides is one in which there is nothing remotely like hope for humanity; only a constant teetering on the brink of multiple apocalypses, many of which don't even end with death or wholesale extinction (the metaphysics of the universe, for example, is a think of sublime Lovecraftian horror in which all of the very worst and most monstrous in humanity's collective soul is made manifest as malevolent, ever-thirsting demon-gods that sustain themselves on the souls and passions of their creators).
One of the more recent occurences within the universe -and one that somewhat shook up the status quo when they were originally introduced- is the archaic, thanatic alien -or “xenos,” as the Imperium of Man has it- race known as The Necrons.
As with most elements of the “40K” universe, The Necrons derive inspiration from a whole suite of sources, including James Cameron's Terminator franchise (the various humanoid, technological skeletons that make up the majority of their ranks bearing more than a small resemblance to the titular cyborg) and gothic horror tropes (most notably deriving aesthetic and mythological influence from “Mummy” horror stories and cinema). They represent a grab-bag of strange and unlikely influences that Games Workshop's writers have thrown together in a blender and refined into a phenomena all their own
In terms of horror, The Necrons represent the ancient and unknown threat; originally, they were introduced as a slumbering race, their species having undergone a process known as “bio-transference” that converted them bodily into semi-living skeletons of metal and circuitry. However, these entities are far more than mere machines; the living minds and souls of the original race were rendered down into a form of alien coding and engram, meaning that they retain sparks and fragments of their original minds and personalities (this in itself is faintly horrific; only the upper-echelons of their society were deemed worthy of the sophisticated shells that would retain anything close to their original personalities, meaning that your rank and file Necron warriors are slumping, semi-aware horrors that barely register the fact that they have become something other). For centuries, they have been interred within immense tomb-complexes that, thanks to the Necron's truly miraculous technology, are often non-euclidian in a Lovecraftian sense; complexes that are unbounded by any strictures of time, dimension or architecture, labyrinths that stretch into mindless and lunatic infinity, maintained by hideous, insectile and arachnid engines whose business is to repair damage to the tombs and rouse their incumbents should they come under threat.
One of the more recent occurences within the universe -and one that somewhat shook up the status quo when they were originally introduced- is the archaic, thanatic alien -or “xenos,” as the Imperium of Man has it- race known as The Necrons.
As with most elements of the “40K” universe, The Necrons derive inspiration from a whole suite of sources, including James Cameron's Terminator franchise (the various humanoid, technological skeletons that make up the majority of their ranks bearing more than a small resemblance to the titular cyborg) and gothic horror tropes (most notably deriving aesthetic and mythological influence from “Mummy” horror stories and cinema). They represent a grab-bag of strange and unlikely influences that Games Workshop's writers have thrown together in a blender and refined into a phenomena all their own
In terms of horror, The Necrons represent the ancient and unknown threat; originally, they were introduced as a slumbering race, their species having undergone a process known as “bio-transference” that converted them bodily into semi-living skeletons of metal and circuitry. However, these entities are far more than mere machines; the living minds and souls of the original race were rendered down into a form of alien coding and engram, meaning that they retain sparks and fragments of their original minds and personalities (this in itself is faintly horrific; only the upper-echelons of their society were deemed worthy of the sophisticated shells that would retain anything close to their original personalities, meaning that your rank and file Necron warriors are slumping, semi-aware horrors that barely register the fact that they have become something other). For centuries, they have been interred within immense tomb-complexes that, thanks to the Necron's truly miraculous technology, are often non-euclidian in a Lovecraftian sense; complexes that are unbounded by any strictures of time, dimension or architecture, labyrinths that stretch into mindless and lunatic infinity, maintained by hideous, insectile and arachnid engines whose business is to repair damage to the tombs and rouse their incumbents should they come under threat.
This in itself is a fantastic and classic trope derived from gothic and Lovecraftian horror; the notion of the ancient, slumbering menace roused by the incautious and unheeding delver. This is precisely how The Necrons first occurred in the “40K” background; as an alien race roused from their aeons-long slumber by stumbling, Imperial archaeological expeditions that inadvertantly trespassed on their territories. Since that original encounter, The Necrons have been stirring in unprecedented numbers across the length and breadth of the galaxy, often beneath the very feet of human -or other alien- civilisations that have inadvertantly accrued above them over aeons of terrestrial time.
The Necrons are ancient and unknowable horrors from beyond time and space; a species whose technology is so advanced, it by-passes any known strictures or parameters of physics and often appears magical:
Their priestly or scientific caste -known collectively as Crypteks- are able to wield physical phenomena and manipulate matter in a way that makes them seem like sorcerers, and often do so in the most gruesome and sadistic manners possible (for example, the Father of Bio-Transference and, thereby, Father of The Necron race, Illuminor Szeras, has numerous weapons and instruments at his command, including one that allows him to render a living being down molecule by molecule and thought by thought into a gruel of data and information which he can then store for later study or absorb to assimillate its knowledge and experience).
The Necrons are ancient and unknowable horrors from beyond time and space; a species whose technology is so advanced, it by-passes any known strictures or parameters of physics and often appears magical:
Their priestly or scientific caste -known collectively as Crypteks- are able to wield physical phenomena and manipulate matter in a way that makes them seem like sorcerers, and often do so in the most gruesome and sadistic manners possible (for example, the Father of Bio-Transference and, thereby, Father of The Necron race, Illuminor Szeras, has numerous weapons and instruments at his command, including one that allows him to render a living being down molecule by molecule and thought by thought into a gruel of data and information which he can then store for later study or absorb to assimillate its knowledge and experience).
The Necrons also boast a certain awful presence by dint of how truly ancient they are; whereas, once upon a time, the status of most ancient race in the 40K universe lay with the vaguely humanoid Aeldari, The Necrons outstrip them by a matter of millennia, being one of the very first sentient races and civilisations to arise in the nascent void of the universe. As such, they have seen and sustained apocalypses that have claimed races like humanity a thousand times over, witnessed the evolution and slow withering of worlds, species, stars and more. They boast a longevity that makes humanity seem little more than the primordial matter that will one day evolve into something resembling life. This immediately makes them terrible to behold, let alone the technologies they have developed during those long, long aeons, many of which derive from a war so cataclysmic, it shook the universe from one end to the other:
Alongside The Necrons, there was another ancient race that are almost entirely forgotten, but which are vaguely refered to in the 40K background as The Old Ones. The Old Ones and The Necrons (or Necrontyr, as they were known back then) purportedly waged war on one another the like of which saw entire galaxies burn, star systems snuffed out or consumed in conflagration. Eventually, The Necrontyr won the conflict with the aid of entities that lend the race a peculiar edge of metaphysics; Lovecraftain beings known as The C'tan or “Star Gods.”
The C'Tan are one of the more esoteric elements of The Necron's background and introduce a disturbing element to 40K's general metaphysics: in the 41st millennium, it has been discovered that there is a parallel realm of raw potential and lunatic abstraction that exists alongside the material; this is The Warp or The Realm of Chaos; the abode of gods, daemons and angels, where the thoughts, emotions, dreads and inspirations of sentient beings have weight and significance, where the strongest and most consistent even flower into states of sentience (hence the existence of gods, daemons, angels and other mythical and fantastical entities in an otherwise science fiction setting). All seemingly miraculous or magical phenomena in the universe derive from The Warp. However, The C'Tan are different; entirely divorced from the medium, and therefore from the metaphysics itself. Rather, it seems that they occupy their own strange states that have never been fully explored or explained (rendering them even more mysterious and distressing).
Originally, The C'Tan were the masters of The Necrons, having tricked the race into accepting bio-transference and thereby indentured slavery to the star god's whims. However, more recent iterations of the species have inverted that dynamic; following bio-transference, The Necrons rose up against the entities that had deceived them and utilised all of their boundless technology to bind the star gods themselves into synthetic bodies, thereby shackling them to their wills. If nothing else, this alone emphasises the true horror of The Necrons: their technology and arrogance is such that they have bound genuine gods and deities to their wills, daring to treat such entities as slaves and living weapons in their crusade to reclaim the galaxy that was once theirs.
The Necrons also boast a certain awful presence by dint of how truly ancient they are; whereas, once upon a time, the status of most ancient race in the 40K universe lay with the vaguely humanoid Aeldari, The Necrons outstrip them by a matter of millennia, being one of the very first sentient races and civilisations to arise in the nascent void of the universe. As such, they have seen and sustained apocalypses that have claimed races like humanity a thousand times over, witnessed the evolution and slow withering of worlds, species, stars and more. They boast a longevity that makes humanity seem little more than the primordial matter that will one day evolve into something resembling life. This immediately makes them terrible to behold, let alone the technologies they have developed during those long, long aeons, many of which derive from a war so cataclysmic, it shook the universe from one end to the other:
Alongside The Necrons, there was another ancient race that are almost entirely forgotten, but which are vaguely refered to in the 40K background as The Old Ones. The Old Ones and The Necrons (or Necrontyr, as they were known back then) purportedly waged war on one another the like of which saw entire galaxies burn, star systems snuffed out or consumed in conflagration. Eventually, The Necrontyr won the conflict with the aid of entities that lend the race a peculiar edge of metaphysics; Lovecraftain beings known as The C'tan or “Star Gods.”
The C'Tan are one of the more esoteric elements of The Necron's background and introduce a disturbing element to 40K's general metaphysics: in the 41st millennium, it has been discovered that there is a parallel realm of raw potential and lunatic abstraction that exists alongside the material; this is The Warp or The Realm of Chaos; the abode of gods, daemons and angels, where the thoughts, emotions, dreads and inspirations of sentient beings have weight and significance, where the strongest and most consistent even flower into states of sentience (hence the existence of gods, daemons, angels and other mythical and fantastical entities in an otherwise science fiction setting). All seemingly miraculous or magical phenomena in the universe derive from The Warp. However, The C'Tan are different; entirely divorced from the medium, and therefore from the metaphysics itself. Rather, it seems that they occupy their own strange states that have never been fully explored or explained (rendering them even more mysterious and distressing).
Originally, The C'Tan were the masters of The Necrons, having tricked the race into accepting bio-transference and thereby indentured slavery to the star god's whims. However, more recent iterations of the species have inverted that dynamic; following bio-transference, The Necrons rose up against the entities that had deceived them and utilised all of their boundless technology to bind the star gods themselves into synthetic bodies, thereby shackling them to their wills. If nothing else, this alone emphasises the true horror of The Necrons: their technology and arrogance is such that they have bound genuine gods and deities to their wills, daring to treat such entities as slaves and living weapons in their crusade to reclaim the galaxy that was once theirs.
Apart from the acutely gothic vein of horror The Necrons themselves represent, The C'tan introduce a sumptuous layer of Lovecraftian, cosmic and metaphysical weirdness, their natures and very existence so abstruse, they throw into question the metaphysics of the entire 41st Millennium. The fact that there are entities such as The C'tan at large -seemingly divine or infernal entities that stand apart from the core metaphysics of The Warp and Chaos- is a sincere and abiding mystery in the setting; how can they exist as they do, what are they, where do they come from?
Furthermore, how is it that they can be shackled and tamed by technology?
The Necrons themselves have evolved down successive iterations, going from the fairly Terminator-esque qualities of their original design to a much more “Mummy-like,” shambling and undead nature in their latest incarnation. The basic Necron Warrior is a thing of extremely traditional horror lent a science fiction twist; they are essentially undead corpses, the remnants of an ancient race and civilisation that have somehow come back to life. However, whereas the undead entities of the Age of Sigmar fantasy setting lean directly into their fantastical and mythological roots, those of the 41st Millennium have been reimagined and embellished to present a slightly wryer, more abstruse twist on the classic tropes:
The Necrons are entities as much of twisted pity as they are living threat, the baseline warriors -and various lesser menials- barely recalling who or what they are, the systems that record the engrams of their original personality decaying and imperfect, meaning that they exist in a dreaming, febrile condition in which they can barely recall their previous lives or perceive the waking world. Worse, down the centuries, certain corruptions and “viruses” have undermined those systems, meaning that certain Necrons have awoken with distinct flaws and shifts in personality:
The -often monstrously redesigned- Destroyers, for example, have been tainted with a form of viral nihilism, meaning that they do not wish to see the resurgance of the Necron empire, rather to obliterate all in their paths, to scour the universe clean of the taint of life and civilisation, leaving behind only the quiescence of scorched rock and empty void. Meanwhile, the truly horrific Flayed Ones have become manic, feral monstrosities, frenzied and blood-stained creatures that drape their mechanical frames in the flayed skins of their enemies and ritually devour those they slay, though they can take no sustenance from the pulped and macerated meat.
Furthermore, how is it that they can be shackled and tamed by technology?
The Necrons themselves have evolved down successive iterations, going from the fairly Terminator-esque qualities of their original design to a much more “Mummy-like,” shambling and undead nature in their latest incarnation. The basic Necron Warrior is a thing of extremely traditional horror lent a science fiction twist; they are essentially undead corpses, the remnants of an ancient race and civilisation that have somehow come back to life. However, whereas the undead entities of the Age of Sigmar fantasy setting lean directly into their fantastical and mythological roots, those of the 41st Millennium have been reimagined and embellished to present a slightly wryer, more abstruse twist on the classic tropes:
The Necrons are entities as much of twisted pity as they are living threat, the baseline warriors -and various lesser menials- barely recalling who or what they are, the systems that record the engrams of their original personality decaying and imperfect, meaning that they exist in a dreaming, febrile condition in which they can barely recall their previous lives or perceive the waking world. Worse, down the centuries, certain corruptions and “viruses” have undermined those systems, meaning that certain Necrons have awoken with distinct flaws and shifts in personality:
The -often monstrously redesigned- Destroyers, for example, have been tainted with a form of viral nihilism, meaning that they do not wish to see the resurgance of the Necron empire, rather to obliterate all in their paths, to scour the universe clean of the taint of life and civilisation, leaving behind only the quiescence of scorched rock and empty void. Meanwhile, the truly horrific Flayed Ones have become manic, feral monstrosities, frenzied and blood-stained creatures that drape their mechanical frames in the flayed skins of their enemies and ritually devour those they slay, though they can take no sustenance from the pulped and macerated meat.
This is before we even get into the more abstruse forms that The Necrons have realised through the process of bio-transference; from the ethereal, extra-dimensional Canoptek Wraiths to the arachnid Canoptek Spiders, the race boasts any number of arcane technological nightmares that are designed with certain horror tropes in mind (the miniscule Scarab Swarms, for example, are masses of mechanical insects that swarm over enemies and devour them down to the bone and beyond, evoking scenes in numerous horror and monster film franchises).
A source of disturbia since their original introduction, The Necrons have, if anything, emphasised this quality in their latest reimagining, which has set them front and centre in the gaming universe as a threat to every other denizen of the 41st Millennium. With the return of their ancient emperor and overlord, Szarekh, the shackler of gods, the universe is set to shudder before the horror of The Necrons once again.
A source of disturbia since their original introduction, The Necrons have, if anything, emphasised this quality in their latest reimagining, which has set them front and centre in the gaming universe as a threat to every other denizen of the 41st Millennium. With the return of their ancient emperor and overlord, Szarekh, the shackler of gods, the universe is set to shudder before the horror of The Necrons once again.
