Full transcript
0:00Every faction in the 41st millennium
0:02organizes itself around the problem of
0:04death.
0:05How to avoid it, transcend it, or make
0:07it mean something.
0:09The Necrons solved it 60 million years
0:11ago, resented the solution almost
0:13immediately, and have been watching
0:15everything else in the galaxy catch up
0:17ever since. First, the scavengers, the
0:20Adeptus Mechanicus, are the one faction
0:23in the galaxy that the Necrons find
0:25simultaneously contemptible and in a
0:27narrow technical sense, legible.
0:30Not because they are competent, but
0:32because a civilization that builds its
0:34entire theology around worshipping
0:36technology it cannot replicate is at
0:38least behaving in a way a Necron Cryptek
0:40can model and predict. The Mechanicus
0:43excavate Necron tomb worlds with the
0:45focused reverence of pilgrims and the
0:47property ethics of looters.
0:49Cataloging artifacts, they lack the
0:51theoretical foundation to understand
0:54while developing doctrine around the
0:56outputs of processes. They have never
0:58once correctly identified the inputs
1:00for. Their Omnissiah, the machine god at
1:03the center of their entire spiritual
1:05architecture, is by Necron reckoning a
1:08C'tan shard, a fragment of a star god
1:11the Necrons themselves defeated,
1:13dismembered, and imprisoned beneath the
1:16surface of Mars long before humanity had
1:18developed the wheel,
1:20which means the Mechanicus have spent
1:2210,000 years conducting fervent
1:24religious observance toward a shackled
1:26piece of a god their own emperor helped
1:29the Necrons keep contained without
1:31anyone involved on the Mechanicus side
1:33ever being told this particular detail.
1:35What the Necrons credit the scavengers
1:37with, grudgingly and without warmth, is
1:40their preservation instinct.
1:43A Mechanicus expedition that
1:45methodically documents everything it
1:47finds is at least not destroying it,
1:49which distinguishes them from most
1:51species who encounter Necron materials
1:53and simply shoot at them until something
1:55interesting falls off. What frustrates
1:57Necron Overlords is the assumption
1:59underneath every mechanic is excavation.
2:01That the owners are gone and the estate
2:03is available. A conclusion that has had
2:05to be corrected repeatedly and at
2:07considerable cost to the Mechanicus.
2:10Every time a tomb complex finishes its
2:12awakening cycle mid-survey.
2:14They are contemptible, but legible.
2:16Trespassers who brought a notebook.
2:18Predictable enough to categorize and
2:21never significant enough to respect.
2:23Second, the infest station. The Orks are
2:26not an enemy the Necrons engage with as
2:29a military peer, a civilizational rival,
2:32or anything requiring the attention of a
2:34senior overlord. They are an ecological
2:37problem. A persistent biological
2:40contamination of worlds the Necrons
2:42consider sovereign territory.
2:44Frustrating specifically because the
2:45standard Necron solution to problems,
2:48which is patience and thorough
2:49application of force,
2:51does not produce a permanent result when
2:53applied to something that produces by
2:55dying. Ork spore biology means that a
2:58campaign the Necrons execute with
3:00complete tactical success.
3:02Every greenskin eliminated, every
3:04settlement reduced, every tunnel
3:05cleared, simply begins again with in
3:08decades. The dead seeding the soil with
3:11the next generation. Which is an outcome
3:13Necron Overlords who operate on
3:14geological timescales find not alarming,
3:17but specifically personally irritating
3:20in the way a drain that re-blocks every
3:21season irritates rather than alarms. The
3:24Orks were engineered by the Old Ones as
3:26weapons during the War in Heaven.
3:29Built for sustained combat against
3:30Necron forces.
3:32Which means the Necrons have been
3:33dealing with this infestation not for
3:35centuries or millennia, but for 60
3:38million years. And the fact that they
3:40are still dealing with it is the one
3:42admission Necron strategic records make
3:45about the Old Ones actual engineering
3:47competence. Warboss Ghazghkull.
3:51Thraka's capacity to rebuild his
3:53after losses that would permanently end
3:55any other military organization
3:57illustrates the problem in miniature.
3:59A commander the Necrons would have filed
4:02under resolved threats decades ago,
4:04simply returning larger to contest the
4:07same ground.
4:08Necrons credit the Orks with one quality
4:10worth acknowledging.
4:12They have no warp signature in any form
4:14the Chaos Gods can meaningfully exploit.
4:17Meaning an Ork-held world is not also a
4:19warp-contaminated world, which places
4:22them above several entries further down
4:24this list. The frustration is biological
4:26rather than tactical.
4:28The Necrons cannot simply win because
4:30the Orks have made losing structurally
4:32impossible.
4:33They are a persistent irritant. The one
4:36enemy a Necron military victory does not
4:38resolve, managed rather than defeated
4:41across a time frame longer than most
4:43species have existed. Third, the
4:45Remnant. The Craftworld
4:48Aeldari are the living descendants of
4:50the civilization whose ancestors
4:52prosecuted the War in Heaven against the
4:54Necrons.
4:55Not a new enemy discovered in the
4:57current age, but the diminished refugee
4:59continuation of the opposing side of a
5:02conflict the Necrons remember
5:03personally.
5:04Fought bitterly and still carry the
5:06consequences of an every metal body and
5:09silent tomb complex currently operating
5:11across the galaxy. The Old Ones created
5:14the Aeldari as one of several psychic
5:16species designed specifically to counter
5:18Necron expansion. And the Necrons paid
5:20dearly enough in that war to make the
5:22distinction between the ancient Aeldari
5:25and their current Craftworld descendants
5:26feel less like a historical technicality
5:29and more like watching a defeated army's
5:31grandchildren maintain the flag. The
5:33fall of the Aeldari and the birth of
5:35Slaanesh destroyed their galactic
5:37dominance entirely.
5:38An event most Necron Overlords were
5:40dormant for and awoke to find had simply
5:43occurred during their absence,
5:45registering it not as cosmic horror but
5:47as a property dispute that had partially
5:49resolved itself without their
5:50involvement. Farseer interventions in
5:53Necron dynastic affairs, documented
5:55across multiple campaigns, where Eldari
5:58seers have attempted to manipulate
5:59overlord decision-making to redirect
6:01Necron forces away from engagements the
6:04Farseers calculated as unfavorable to
6:06Eldari interests, are treated by those
6:08overlords not with outrage, but with the
6:10measured annoyance of someone who has
6:12recognized a technique used against them
6:15before and is simply counting the
6:17iterations. Necrons respect Eldari
6:19psychic capability with the specific
6:21seriousness one extends to a weapon with
6:23a confirmed body count.
6:25The War in Heaven established exactly
6:28how dangerous this lineage can be when
6:30operating at full capacity.
6:32And Necron battle doctrine has not
6:34forgotten a lesson 60 million years old
6:37simply because the civilization that
6:39demonstrated it is now operating from
6:41mobile world ships with a fraction of
6:43its former population. The frustration
6:45is that Eldari foresight allows them to
6:48decline engagements on Necron terms,
6:50denying the clean and decisive outcomes
6:52Necron tactical superiority should
6:54guarantee.
6:56They are old enemies, diminished, the
6:58most historically significant faction on
7:00this list, now reduced to a fraction of
7:03what once made the Necrons pay dearly,
7:05respected as a memory and assessed as a
7:07shadow of one. Fourth, the broken
7:09remnant, the Drukhari, are what results
7:12when a portion of the civilization that
7:14lost the War in Heaven responded to its
7:16subsequent existential crisis by fully
7:19committing to the behaviors that caused
7:21the crisis. A solution the Necrons, who
7:23answered their own extinction-level
7:25problem by the diametrically opposite
7:27method, find both philosophically
7:29irrational and, in a way that does not
7:32translate cleanly into Necron emotional
7:34vocabulary, faintly repellent. The
7:36Necrons resolved their vulnerability by
7:39eliminating the biological substrate
7:41that created it, Surrendering their
7:43organic forms entirely and accepting the
7:45costs of that trade with open eyes.
7:48The Drukhari resolved the same
7:50fundamental problem.
7:52A soul perpetually at risk of
7:54consumption by Slaanesh.
7:56By feeding Slaanesh enough other souls
7:58to keep their own temporarily
8:00sufficient.
8:01A solution that requires them to sustain
8:03an economy of suffering in permanent
8:05operation with no exit condition and no
8:08diminishing requirement forever.
8:10Drukhari raids on partially awakened
8:12Necron tomb worlds have been documented
8:14motivated specifically by the calculus
8:16that Necrons in the early stages of
8:18reactivation cannot pursue effectively.
8:21A tactical reading that is not wrong and
8:24that Necron overlords have noted in
8:26their own records alongside the
8:27adjustment to awakening protocols that
8:29followed.
8:31Commorragh's spatial engineering is
8:33assessed purely on technical grounds a
8:35considerable achievement. Pocket
8:37dimensional architecture of genuine
8:39sophistication built and maintained by a
8:41civilization working from the remnants
8:43of old one adjacent knowledge. That
8:45sophistication being deployed entirely
8:48in service of an addiction the Drukhari
8:50themselves have never once seriously
8:52attempted to cure is to Necron analysts
8:55roughly equivalent to constructing a
8:57magnificent astronomical instrument
8:59solely to track the approach of a storm
9:02the builder has decided to walk into on
9:04a schedule.
9:06They are contemptible a worse iteration
9:08of an already defeated people. Notable
9:11only for the ingenuity of the
9:12self-inflicted condition they have built
9:14their entire civilization around
9:16sustaining indefinitely. Fifth. The
9:19upstarts the Imperium of Man represent
9:22something the Necrons do not have a
9:24precisely calibrated emotional response
9:26to.
9:27Because the closest analog in Necron
9:29experience is returning from a long
9:31absence to find the property occupied.
9:34The occupants convinced of their own
9:36legitimacy and the paperwork they have
9:38produced to support that legitimacy
9:40predating nothing the actual owners
9:42would recognize as a relevant authority.
9:45Necron Overlord's awakening to find
9:47Imperial hive cities constructed
9:49directly above their tomb complexes do
9:52not experience this primarily as a
9:53military provocation. They experience it
9:56as an administrative correction that has
9:58been left pending for longer than it
10:00should have been. The Imperium's 10,000
10:03years of continuous occupation
10:05registering on a Necron Dynasty's
10:07timeline as approximately the interval
10:09between maintenance cycles. The Maynarkh
10:11Dynasty's systematic campaign to reclaim
10:14tomb worlds in the Orpheus sector
10:16driving Imperial forces from worlds the
10:18Dynasty had held long before humanity
10:21developed agriculture is documented in
10:23Imperial records as an Exterminatus
10:25level event and in Necron records as a
10:28reclamation proceeding. The difference
10:30in framing telling you everything about
10:32which side considers itself the original
10:34party to the dispute. The God Emperor of
10:37Mankind, whatever his precise nature, is
10:40assessed by Necron Overlords not as a
10:42divine being requiring theological
10:44response but as an unusually durable
10:47human
10:48which places Imperial religious
10:50authority at approximately no position
10:53on the Necron hierarchy of concerns.
10:55What Necrons acknowledge about the
10:57upstarts without warmth and without
10:59anything resembling admiration is the
11:02sheer unreasonableness stubbornness of a
11:04species that continues organized
11:06resistance past the point where every
11:08military projection said the engagement
11:10should have ended. Not impressive
11:12precisely but requiring more thorough
11:15application of resources than the
11:16Necrons initially allocated.
11:19The frustration is scale. The Imperium
11:21is too distributed, too willing to
11:23replace its losses, and too vast to be
11:26corrected with the efficiency an
11:27Overlord would prefer. They are
11:29unwelcome tenants. Too large to dismiss,
11:33too recently arrived to acknowledge as
11:34legitimate, and too stubborn to remove
11:37on any timeline a Necron would describe
11:39as prompt. Sixth, the Mayflies, the Tau
11:42Empire, occupy the specific position on
11:44the Necron strategic register of a
11:46civilization that is not yet done
11:48anything significant enough to warrant a
11:50finalized assessment. Not dismissed with
11:53hostility, not engaged with as a threat,
11:56but filed under pending in a
11:58bureaucratic structure whose oldest open
12:00cases predate the Tau homeworld's
12:02formation as a geologically stable body.
12:06The Tau Empire is approximately 6,000
12:08years old. Individual Necron Overlords
12:10have personal experiential memories of
12:13epochs longer than the Tau's entire
12:15history as a species capable of fire.
12:18There is no register in Necron strategic
12:20architecture in which a civilization
12:23this young constitutes a peer power, and
12:25the Necrons have not constructed one.
12:28An absence the Tau's own expansion rate
12:30will eventually force them to address,
12:32but has not yet.
12:34Tau pulse technology, assessed by Necron
12:36Crypteks in the rare instances where
12:38examination has occurred, represents
12:40competent application of physics the
12:42Necrons had solved and moved past
12:44millions of years before the Tau star
12:46system had cooled sufficiently to
12:48support liquid water.
12:50A judgment that is not contemptuous so
12:52much as simply scalar. The same way a
12:55structural engineer's silence on a
12:57child's architectural drawings reflects
12:59category rather than critique. The one
13:01quality the Tau possess that Necron
13:03analysts record as a genuine observation
13:06rather than an absence is their complete
13:09lack of warp presence.
13:11A species that does not feed the
13:13primordial annihilator, does not
13:15destabilize the metaphysical environment
13:17of contested space, and does not
13:19complicate Necron strategic calculations
13:22by adding psychic variables to
13:23engagements, which distinguishes them
13:25favorably from nearly every other entry
13:28on this list. No significant direct
13:30engagement between Necron dynasties and
13:32Tau Septs has yet produced the kind of
13:34documented record that shapes long-term
13:37strategic doctrine on either side, which
13:39is itself the point. They are beneath
13:42notice, assessed not with hostility, but
13:45with the particular indifference of a
13:46civilization for which the Tau's entire
13:48arc from stone tools to interstellar
13:51expansion is a footnote that has not yet
13:53reached its relevant section. Seventh,
13:56the primordial annihilator, Chaos and
13:58the forces of the warp, are not an enemy
14:01in any sense the word normally operates.
14:04They are the consequence of a
14:05catastrophic decision the Old Ones made
14:0860 million years ago,
14:10a wound torn in the fabric of reality
14:12that has been metastasizing ever since,
14:14and the Necron's response to it is not
14:16fear or tactical caution, but something
14:19closer to the cold, sustained fury of a
14:22civilization watching a fire that
14:24someone else started still burning in
14:26the structure they were promised would
14:28be repaired. The Old Ones seeded psychic
14:30species across the galaxy as weapons
14:33against Necron expansion, and the
14:35collective psychic resonance of those
14:36species, amplified across millions of
14:39years of war, suffering, and death, fed
14:42the warp to the point where the Chaos
14:44Gods coalesced into the permanent
14:45fixtures they are today, which means the
14:48Necrons did not merely lose the War in
14:50Heaven. They lost it in a way that
14:52permanently altered the nature of the
14:54galaxy they were fighting over. Necron
14:56biotransference eliminated warp presence
14:59entirely.
15:00There is nothing in a Necron's metal
15:02frame that the Chaos Gods can reach,
15:04consume, or corrupt, but immunity to
15:07direct predation is not the same as
15:09immunity to living in a galaxy whose
15:11metaphysical substrate is being
15:12gradually consumed. And Necron Overlords
15:15who have watched that consumption
15:16progress across geological timescales
15:19have developed a perspective on it that
15:21does not resemble anything a species
15:23with a shorter memory would recognize as
15:25a normal strategic concern. The Void
15:27Dragon's imprisonment and the broader
15:29C'tan project of operating entirely
15:31outside warp physics represents the
15:33Necron's oldest practical answer to this
15:35problem.
15:36Entities that exist in material reality
15:38without warp dependency, whose defeat
15:40and containment was partly motivated by
15:42preventing further destabilization of
15:44physical existence during a period when
15:46the warp was already beginning to grow
15:48beyond its original parameters. There is
15:50no respect here, no professional
15:52acknowledgement, no evaluative credit
15:55extended across the gap. Chaos is not
15:57admired the way a dangerous enemy is
16:00admired because it is not an enemy in
16:02any framework the Necrons apply to
16:04opponents who can be engaged, defeated,
16:07and filed under resolved. What Necron
16:10strategic records acknowledge is scale
16:12and duration. This is the one
16:14outstanding problem in 60 million years
16:17of Necron existence that has not moved
16:19closer to resolution. And the one
16:21consequence of the war in heaven that no
16:24amount of patience, firepower, or
16:26dynastic coordination has yet addressed.
16:29They are an ancient enemy, unresolved.
16:32The oldest entry on this list, the most
16:35personal grievance the Necrons carry,
16:37and the one problem for which 60 million
16:39years of accumulated capability has
16:41still not produced a finished answer.
16:44Eighth, the Great Devourer, the
16:46Tyranids, are the only entry on this
16:48list that the Necrons cannot address
16:50through patience.
16:51The only force in the galaxy that
16:53threatens not Necron dominance, not
16:55Necron territory,
16:57not Necron strategic position,
16:59but the material substrate of Necron
17:01existence itself, and the one enemy for
17:03whom the Necron's greatest advantage,
17:05the ability to simply outlast whatever
17:07the galaxy produces, is not a strategy,
17:10but a liability. Necron immortality is
17:13material, not metaphysical.
17:16It depends on living metal bodies,
17:18functioning tomb infrastructure, and a
17:20physical galaxy composed of the matter
17:22those systems require to operate.
17:25A hive fleet does not conquer worlds. It
17:28eliminates them, stripping organic and
17:30eventually inorganic material down to
17:32bedrock and beyond. And a Necron whose
17:35tomb world is consumed by a Tyranid
17:37advance does not lose a military asset.
17:40They lose the physical ground their
17:42continued existence requires, which is a
17:44category of loss Necron strategic
17:46architecture was not designed to account
17:48for because nothing in 60 million years
17:50of galactic history had previously made
17:52it a necessary consideration. The
17:54Necrons complete absence of warp
17:57presence, which protects them from the
17:59shadow in the warp and renders them
18:00invisible to the hive mind's standard
18:02psychic detection at range, provides no
18:05meaningful advantage once a hive fleet
18:07has identified a tomb world through
18:08conventional means and begun its
18:10approach, at which point the Necrons
18:12immunity to psychic influence is exactly
18:14as useful as it sounds against something
18:16that primarily kills things by eating
18:18them. Imotekh the Stormlord's recorded
18:20strategic assessments have acknowledged,
18:22with the specific economy of language a
18:24Necron overlord applies to conclusions
18:26he would prefer were otherwise, that
18:29Tyranid incursion at hive fleet scale
18:31constitutes a threat category requiring
18:33coordinated response beyond any single
18:35dynasty's unilateral capacity.
18:38An admission that is, in the context of
18:40Necron institutional culture, roughly
18:42equivalent to a formal declaration of
18:44alarm. The Tyranids arrive from outside
18:46the galaxy, outside the 60 million year
18:49frame of reference within which every
18:51Necron strategic model was constructed,
18:53outside any era the Necrons personally
18:55remember.
18:56They are not a civilization that lost a
18:58previous war, not a species that
19:01occupied Necron territory during the
19:02long sleep, not an enemy with a history
19:05the Necrons can contextualize. There is
19:08no credit extended here, no acknowledged
19:11quality, no professional respect for a
19:13dangerous peer.
19:15There is only the recognition made with
19:17characteristic Necron understatement
19:20that this is the one enemy for which
19:22patience is not a solution. Because the
19:24thing being patiently preserved may not
19:26exist once the patience has run its
19:28course. They are an existential
19:31category.
19:32The only threat on this list that
19:34operates entirely outside the framework
19:36of eternal patience and material
19:38immortality. The only enemy for whom the
19:41Necron's deepest strategic assumption
19:43that they will still be here when the
19:45problem resolves is precisely what is
19:48being contested. The Adeptus Mechanicus
19:51sit in contemptible but legible
19:53territory at the bottom of any Necron
19:55regard. Trespassers who worship what
19:58they cannot understand. Predictable
20:00enough to manage and never significant
20:02enough to take seriously as equals. The
20:05Orks occupy their own separate
20:07frustrating category as the one
20:09persistent irritant a military victory
20:11does not resolve. An infestation that
20:13has been running for 60 million years
20:15and shows no sign of concluding on any
20:17schedule the Necrons find acceptable.
20:19The Craftworld Eldari stand as old
20:22enemies now diminished. The most
20:24historically consequential faction on
20:26this entire list carrying the genetic
20:28legacy of civilizations that once made
20:30the Necrons pay enormously. Now reduced
20:33to a refugee existence that reads as a
20:35long quiet epilogue to a war the galaxy
20:38has mostly forgotten.
20:40The Drukhari fall beneath even their
20:42Craftworld cousins as contemptible in
20:44the specific way of a civilization that
20:46inherited a difficult position and then
20:49made it substantially worse through
20:51sustained deliberate effort. The
20:53Imperium of Man occupies the unwelcome
20:55tenants tier. An empire built across
20:58Necron territory during a long absence.
21:01Too vast to correct quickly and too
21:03stubborn to correct cleanly requiring
21:06far more administrative attention than
21:07the actual legitimacy of their claim
21:10warrants.
21:11The Tau register beneath notice, not
21:14dismissed with hostility, simply not yet
21:16significant enough to have earned a
21:18permanent category in Necron strategic
21:20records.
21:21A status their own expansion will
21:23eventually change. And which the Necrons
21:25have noted they will address at that
21:27time. Chaos sits in the ancient enemy
21:29unresolved tier, not because the Necrons
21:32fear it in any conventional sense, but
21:34because it is the one wound in the
21:36galaxy that 60 million years of Necron
21:38patience has not brought closer to
21:40closing.
21:41And the Tyranids stand alone in the
21:43existential category. The one force for
21:45whom the Necrons deepest advantage is no
21:47advantage at all.
21:49Every other entry on this list is a
21:50problem the Necrons believe they will
21:52eventually outlast. The Great Devourer
21:55is the one that makes outlasting feel
21:56like a premise worth examining more
21:58carefully before you commit to it
22:00entirely.