Great Sleep
The Great Sleep is a period when the Necron race went into slumber on their Tomb Worlds after the War in Heaven and the rebellion against the C'tan.[1a]
History
At the end of the back-to-back wars against the Old Ones and C'tan, Szarekh, the Silent King, saw that the Necrons were too weakened to stand against threats such as the emerging Eldar and Krork races. So it was that the Silent King ordered the remaining Necron cities to be transformed into great tomb complexes threaded with stasis-crypts. The Necrons were laid to rest, ordered to sleep for sixty million years and then reawaken, ready to rebuild all that was lost and restore the dynasties to their former glory. Yet the Silent King did not join his subjects. Destroying the command protocols by which he had controlled his people, the Silent King left the Galaxy, there to find whatever measure of solace or penance he could. For sixty million years the Necrons remained in their deathless slumber in their tombs in what became known as the Great Sleep.[1e]
As time passed, many Tomb Worlds suffered catastrophic failures. Some fell prey to malfunction or ill-fortune. Some were destroyed by marauding Eldar.[1e] Some were destroyed by disasters such as solar flares.[2] In some cases, a Necron Lord might prematurely awaken and gradually succumb to madness in solitude until they in turn improperly activate their worlds population without proper Cryptek protocols, dooming even its nobility to being little more than mindless automatons.[2] These failures destroyed millions, if not billions of dormant Necrons.[1e] Moreover, most Necrons reawakened with some kind of cognitive decay or damage when they finally were reactivated.[2]
The world of Zapennec fought a devastating battle against the Eldar whereupon they were forced into slumber when the Great Sleep descended that prevented them from clearing the debris from the planet's orbit.[1c] At the time, a number of prophecies were known to had been made with regards to apotheosis.[1d] During the Great Sleep, the Webway around Trantis has become sundered thus isolating it from those world's it used to supply.[1c] In addition, the master program of Seidon became corrupted which combined with its damages records led it to sending random Necron ships into space.[1d] The world of Mandragora is known to have survived the Great Sleep relatively intact and free from the predation of plunderers.[1b]
Some Necrons prematurely awoke during the Great Sleep, and they organised themselves under the Awakened Council.[2] The Council put strict protocols on awakening Necrons prematurely due to the inherent risk of prematurely reawakening members of their race. If premature reactivation was to take place it could only be under the most dire of circumstances and even then only under proper supervision by Crypteks.[2]
Sources
- 1: Codex: Necrons (5th Edition)
- 2: The Infinite and the Divine (Novel) Chapters 3-4
