Monday Evening Thread 13Feb2023 – Necron Units or March of the Death Machines

Evening, tonight is Valentines Day eve, so if you and your SO celebrate you have about 24 hours to get your shit together.  I was told last night that I had better make her feel loved and cherished, so I am scrambling a little bit.  Makes me wish I was a Necron, immortal and not having to deal with Hallmark Holidays, would make life a lot easier.

Per Usual: Images and links are from Lexicanum or the Warhammer 40k wiki 

One thing to note that I left out of the last entry, Necrons are divided into Dynasties, which usually relate to their family or organizational structures they were a part of when they were living beings.  Each dynasty has a leader and a cotree of Nobles who have maintained their memories, abilities, and even some emotions from their lives before the bioforge.

The grunt of the Necron armies are the Necron warriors, grim, silent, emotionless, and implacable.  They do not stop, sort of like a T-1000 without the personality.  As Necrontyr they were not soldiers, they were artisans, scribes, workers, the common and low ranked of the Necrontyr.  The bioforge stripped them of their memories and emotions, so they have no fear and no memories of the time they were alive.  The warriors shamble forward in battle like metallic zombies, firing a weapon known as a Gauss Flayer, which works by dissolving molecular bonds layer by layer, only the necrodermis of the Necrons seems to be able to stop a gauss rifle, even Space Marines are susceptible to the weapon, and if they can get close enough, the blade on the gauss flayer can be used to hack apart their enemies.  The more Necron warriors there are on the battle field, the faster they can regenerate any damage, as each warrior becomes part of the overall nanoscarab repair network.  Even a lone Necron warrior can regenerate over time and get back up; however if the damage is too great the warrior is teleported back to the tomb world to await repairs.

A little higher on the chain are the Necron Immortals, these units were the elite warriors of the Necrontyr, and even the trip through the bioforge has not stripped this away.  Immortals can think, plan, strategize, and use their tactical experience to direct the Necron warriors in battle.  Able to speak in a mechanical monotone, they are still limited to only being able to give status and battle reports to the Overlords.  They do have one emotion – the joy of slaughter.  Armed with the Gauss Blaster or the Tesla Carbine, the can damage any armor including that of star ships.  Their ability to repair themselves is greater than a Necron Warriors while having an even heavier necrodermis, making them really, really hard to bring down and a terror on the battlefield.

Next we have Necron Destroyers, whom even the Necron Nobles and Overlords think are insane.  Basically they are Immortals who have had their logic circuits scrambled or have become so fixated on the joy of slaughter that they augment or “upgrade” themselves in a number of ways.  Other Necrons view these changes as self mutilation, the Necron version of cutters.  Usually the afflicted Necrons remove their legs and graft their chassis to a gravity platform, replacing their arms with weapons, and upgrading their heads with targeting modules.  They also have no allegiance to any dynasty and are usually not part of any army, they “crash the party” to join any battle that gives them a chance to kill or destroy.  They use a heavier version of the Gauss Blaster know as the Gauss Cannon, and due to replacing their legs with a grav sled, they are fast, very fast and agile.

Now we get to the snipers and assassins of the Necrons – the Deathmark.  These beings are equipped with the Synaptic Disintegrator, which destroys the neural and synaptic tissues of the brain, with even a near miss causing intense pain and physical incapacitation.  Another thing is that the Disintegrator can be fired continuously and on while on the move unlike other sniper weapons.  Deathmarks can also phase in and out of normal space-time, awaiting the perfect kill shot, only phasing in to fire.

And last, but definitely not least in terms of sheer fuckedupness, we have the Flayed Ones, who are are Necrons afflicted with a “disease” which afflicts them with an unsaitable hunger, and causes them to warp in shape, getting an extra joint in their legs which allows them to run on all fours limbs, their fingers become long thin knives, and they gain the ability to travel through dimensions.  No Necron commander asks for Flayed Ones to appear as they cannot (or will not) follow orders.  Their one objective is to hunt and “eat”.  They will cut down their foes and rub the flesh they have carved from their prey (who may still be alive) across their faces, trying to eat the flesh, but never being able to do so.  The reason for being called the Flayed Ones is their propensity to flay the skin off of their victims and wear it like a shroud, sometimes they will even attach their victims bodies to their own, till they rot away and fall off.  After a battle they will flee into other dimensions with their trophies as all other Necrons will attempt to destroy them, so that they will not become affected.

As this has gotten long, I will cover the support and specialist units a bit later, especially the Canoptek Spyders and their minions the Canoptek scarabs.  Nasty buggers.

Till next time, don’t let the Flayed Ones get you!