Necron Revolt
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The Necron Revolt was an ancient conflict waged by the Necrons against their C'tan masters.[1a]
History
After the Necrontyr agreed to accept the offer of the C'tan to give them new undying bodies, they were finally able to crush the Old Ones in War in Heaven and gain dominion over the Galaxy. The C'tan used the life-force of the Necrontyr to sate themselves and grow ever more powerful.[3] However the Necron Silent King, Szarekh, never truly accepted this and now saw his people as enslaved to the Star Gods. Throughout the final stages of the War in Heaven, Szarekh bided his time, waiting for the moment where the C'tan would be most vulnerable while also keeping control of the command protocols of the Necrons.[1a]
With the Old Ones finally defeated and the C'tan busy now even feasting on one another, the Silent King struck and after activating his command protocols led a Necron revolt against the arrogant Star Gods. The C'tan fell in a variety of ways as the Necrons released unimaginable weapons and energies against them:[3a][3b][4]
- The Nightbringer fell to Hypercannons built by Szarekh's finest Crypteks which focused the living energy of the universe onto their former master. The C'tan had believed out of hubris that these weapons were built out of tribute to him, and was caught unawares by the sudden attack.[3b]
- The Deceiver was reduced to shards by devices known as Singing Spheres.[4]
- The Endless Swarm was defeated by the Sorrow of the Void.[4]
- The Burning One was brought down by a spear wielded by Szarekh himself.[4]
- The Silent City was entombed.[4]
- The Moulder of Worlds was bound and twisted by its own cosmic powers.[4]
- The Walking Blight was lured through the Inevitable Gateway and broken within the void beyond.[4]
- The greatest and terrible of their kind, the Void Dragon, was defeated by the Blackstone Fortresses.[4]
- The final C'tan to fall was Llandu'gor, who was completely destroyed at the Battle of the Sokar Gate, said to be the last battle of the revolt.[5] However as the Star God died he cursed the Necron race with the Flayer Virus which continues to plague them to this day.[2]
- Eldar Mythology dictates that than upon falling to Cegorach's trickery the Outsider had in its madness become too terrible of a foe slay. Some claim that the Outsider had actually rent itself asunder.[4] Other accounts claim that no prison had ever held it, that it is the one C'tan to never fall, and that it would one day return.[7]
The C'tan, almost impossible to destroy entirely due to their very nature, were instead shattered into shards[1a], though some C'tan such as Llandu'gor were destroyed utterly.[2] Soon enough, these C'tan shards were enslaved by their former vassals and held within multi-dimensional prisons known as Tesseract Labyrinths.[1b] Though Szarekh had succeeded, millions of Necrons were lost during the struggle.[3a]
In the aftermath of the revolt Szarekh knew that the Necrons would need to put themselves into stasis in order to recover and survive against new threats such as the Eldar. The Silent King’s final command to his people was that they must sleep for sixty million years but awake ready to rebuild all that they had lost and to restore the dynasties to their former glory. Thus was the Silent King’s order given, and as the last tomb world sealed its vaults, he destroyed the command protocols by which he had controlled his people before entering into a self-imposed exile in the extragalactic void.[3a]
Sources
- 1: Codex: Necrons (5th Edition)
- 2: Shield of Baal: Devourer (Novella), ch. 9
- 3: Codex: Necrons (8th Edition)
- 4: Codex: Necrons (9th Edition), pgs. 26-27
- 5: The Twice-Dead King - Reign (Novel) - Chapter 4
