Warhammer 40K: Necrons Vs Tyranids – War of the Silent King
The Silent King is returning and he’s got a plan to save the galaxy from being devoured.
Szarekh is the Silent King of the Necrons – he was the leader who made the deal with the C’tan for immortality and also doomed his people. After the War in Heaven, he led his people once again in revolt and defeated the C’tan. As penance, he chose to exile himself and left this galaxy. He traveled the void between the stars and eventually he encountered the Tyranids who had been called to our galaxy by the overloaded Pharos.
Recognizing the threat that they were, he returned to the galaxy after millenna of travel to find things had changed quite a bit. He’s been fighting a war in the shadows to slow the Tyranids down and is continuing to manipulate events in hopes of stopping the threat.
So far, all we’ve really gotten about this Silent War has been snippets. We’ve got the above text from the Necron Codex. We had the great Fist-bump Team-up from the 5th Edition Blood Angel’s codex. This was later tweaked and became known as the Gehenna Campaign. It was also documented further in the short story The Word of the Silent King.
More recently, there was even more hints at this war in the pages of the January 2020 White Dwarf (#450) in the sectioned titled “Last of the Silent Kings” and it touched on these events:
This is a battle that has been brewing for a while now. It’s a fight that has had literal years of build up in the background. Now that Games Workshop is going to bring back Szarekh, it would make sense that this battle would come to the forefront. Plus it also creates a Xenos vs Xenos campaign which is something the Grimdark really does need more of – it sure does feel like they have been forgotten.
It does seem pretty odd that in all the Grimdark we’ve only gotten a handful of mentions of Xenos vs Xenos conflicts. The Imperium and Chaos are the two primary forces that are driving the conflict forward…but it’s a BIG galaxy. And there are other threats, specifically the Tyranids, who want to devour all the biomass in the galaxy. That seems like a pretty scary threat and only the Silent King appears to have an endgame to stop it.
He beat the C’tan…I’m not counting him out of this fight yet!
Personally, I’m really hoping that Games Workshop does take some time to look at this battle that’s been stewing. It would give us a look at how calculating the Necrons can be. It makes them feel less like monsters of the week and more like serious players on the galactic-scale. The same goes for the Tyranids! A war between the two would give GW the opportunity to showcase how serious a threat the Tyranids truly are to the galaxy. They are the great devourer that crossed the void and they want to EAT everything. They are the ultimate existential threat to the galaxy. This war could make BOTH factions a lot more meaningful to the setting than they are now – and that sounds awesome.
Bring on the War of the Silent King!
