Warhammer 40K: Secrets of Codex Necrons
The Necrons are back with all new background and a lot of new secrets revealed. Here are some of my favorite.
Codex Necrons has new units, new rules, new points, and new minis, but it also has 40 pages of lore and background. While a bunch of it is a retelling of things we’ve heard before, there is a lot of new items in there, and a lot of them answer longstanding questions that have hung in the darkness of the Grimdark for decades. Let’s get started.
The Blackstone Fortresses
We’ve been talking about Blackstone fortresses for a while now. We know six these were discovered in the Gothic Sector millennia ago. The Eldar call them the Talismans of Vaul, and say they can used to destroy the C’Tan. They were activated by Abaddon and used in the the Gothic War and the Fall of Cadia. There is a 7th unknown one, described in the Blackstone Fortress game, that is drawings ships from across the galaxy to it and consuming them.
And that is where Codex Necrons picks up the trail…
There is not a single unknown Blackstone Fortress… but THREE, spread in roughly a line across the galaxy. See the map above. The one on the far left in the Segmentum Pacificus is the one from the Boardgame. A second appears to lie in the galactic core, and another on the far northern Eastern Fringe past the Great Rift. Later in the codex in a section describing the C’tan Mag’ladroth known as The Dragon is this tidbit: “Yet about Mag’Ladroth’s neck had hung the Talismans of Vaul, and by the light that spilled from within them had a secret been revealed.”
Later still when describing the Mephrit dynasty, the stellar executioners of the Necrons, it is said they employed “spaceborne weapons of incalculable power” which they used to destroy stars of their enemies. When the Mephrit awakened, their much feared spaceborne weapons were gone, lost or destroyed…
The Contra-Eympiric Nexuses
We all know of the Pariah Nexus and got some vague hints at the very end of Psychic Awakening that there were others. Codex Necrons expands on this with that map up there. The lowest center one to the left of the Szarekhan Dynasty is the Pariah Nexus. There are five in total, forming a rough ring around much of the Imperium. The codex explains the grand design of The Silent King to use these to both protect key locations from intruders, and to begin to test the theory of shearing the soul from the living creatures.
There are of course kinks in the plan. One is the other races slowly figuring out what Blackstone is, thus leading to conflict for the material itself, as well as Chaos’ irritating habit of using it to force warp intrusions right where the Necrons want things to stay calm. You can never turn your back on the Ruinous Powers, they are always mucking up your plans!
More chillingly, the ultimate goal of the Contra-Empyric plan is revealed. The Silent King doesn’t want the material galaxy severed from the warp, as that would probably kill off most life, leaving the Necrons as the rulers of a graveyard. Instead the Silent King wishes to dial up the volume of the zones to render the galaxy’s sentient races to mindless walking automatons, utterly docile and fodder for experimentation on how to reverse Bio-transferance. Once perfected, these races will serve as hosts for the Necrons to regain their flesh and blood bodies.
The Silent King
The silent King is not only the ruler of the Necron Race, but he’s a eerily crafty one. So crafty that Necrons literally cannot think upon any of his words for long. Any long-term determined thinking into his goals, and motives leaves other Necrons shifting to other mental topics, whether they want to or not. The entire race finds strange gaps in their memories regarding the Silent King, and his past.
He says he saw the Tyranids in the void of inter-galactic space and returned to save his people. He says his great plan is to build up the contra-Empyric Nexus to safeguard the galaxy for his people. He says he destroyed the emgrams that slaved the Necrons to his word, and granted them free will. But there are obvious logical holes in his stories. He has reformulated the Triarch, but the other two members who sit on his throne are almost unknown Phaerons from minor Dynasties, who parrot his every word. Those who meet The Silent King bend the knee to his his great plan, and ally with his Szarekhan Dynasty. Those who do not are never seen again.
Necron Ghosts
In the galactic north, beyond the Eye of Terror lay the Empire of the Severed. Here potent radiation storms destroyed and isolated doomed Dynasties. Yet somehow Necron forces march forth – the “Severed”. As these Necron armies march forth, each is surrounded by a ghostly ethereal after-image that moves in perfect synchronicity with the mechanical form. What these ghosts represent is unknown but when the Severed attack other Necrons, the victims rise in the form of Severed themselves. The idea is terrifying even to the Necron’s trapped mechanical minds, and they fear what this means for the fate of their race’s souls.
Undying Pirates
Yes, there are Necron Pirates! The highly eccentric Thaszar the Invicible is a Pirate King who captured a Tomb World, reprogrammed to make him it’s Phaeron, and creates ever larger Necron pirate fleets to raid across the galaxy, plundering all within his reach.
Hey Look – A Dolmen Gate!
At long last we get artwork of exactly what a Dolmen Gate looks like! Here is one that appeared on Amontep II, and began to disgorge Necrons, much to the irritation of the defending Adeptus Mechanicus.
