Warhammer 40K: Necron Hypertech
Today Loremasters we explore some of hyper technology of the Necrons – the World Engine, Celestial Orrery & the Dolmen Gates.
Masters of Material Technology
The Necrons are the masters of Material technology, and their technological feats may seem magical to lesser races. Their technological masters, Crypteks, can manipulate matter at a fundamental level and wield such arcane concepts as phase-gates, subatomic infusion, and temporal looping. Several Necron super-weapons such as the World Engine and Celestial Orrery have galaxy-devastating capabilities. However it is Living Metal, or Necrodermis, which equips nearly all Necron technology. These billion-strong swarns of nano-Scarabs crawl under the skin of Necrons at a cellular level, allowing for self-repair and regeneration. Also, on particularly rare occasions, a super heavy Necron device called a Necron Pylon is seen. It is feared for its extreme power and ability to appear anywhere on the battlefield.
Necron rank-and-file troops are equipped with a devastating array of armament, most notable Gauss Weapons which strip away a foes atoms layer by layer and give the Necrons a fearsome level of firepower. Their anti-grav warmachines are based around the art of invasion and terror, wielding horrifying energy weaponry and other esoteric abilities such as Wormholes. The Necrons also wield large amounts of non-sentient Robots known as Canoptek constructs, which tended their Tomb Worlds during the Great Sleep.
The Necron fleet is a small but deadly force capable of destroying most ships very easily. They also don’t make use of the same form of interstellar travel, the Warp, as other races do, making them difficult to intercept. The Necron Fleet achieves FTL travel by a variety of means, such as Dolmen Gates and Inertialess Drive.
The World Engine
The World Engine was a planetoid-sized Necron space vessel that carved a swathe of destruction through the Imperium before it was destroyed in M4.
In 912.M41, the Necron Lord of the Tomb World Borsis was overthrown in a coup by another who wished to expand his empire. The long dormant engines of the World Engine were set alight. The World Engine appeared without warning in the Vidar subsector of the Imperium in 926.M41, and quickly scoured the Agri Worlds of Gaios Prime and Gaios Tertio of life with its powerful Gauss projectors.
The Imperial response force included the entire sector fleet and elements from fifteen Space Marine chapters, including the Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Astral Knights, Invaders, Red Consuls< and Aurora Chapters. But the World Engine’s void shields were impervious to any weapon the Imperium could fire at it, and prevented any direct assault, repelling Drop Pods and Boarding Torpedoes alike, and hopelessly scrambling teleportation beams. After two full Terminator Squads from the Invaders were lost in an attempt to teleport through the shields, further attempts were forbidden. Meanwhile, the World Engine’s weapons systems wreaked havoc on the Imperial task force, destroying or crippling countless ships and inflicting millions of casualties.
It was only the sacrifice of the Astral Knights that allowed the monstrous craft to be destroyed. In a gamble, Chapter Master Artor Amhrad piloted the Battle barge Tempestus on a collision course. Where conventional weapons had failed to break through the World Engine’s shields, the adamantium-tipped prow of the Tempestus punched through, and the entire Astral Knights chapter deployed to the surface of the craft in Drop Pods.
Inside the World Engine were tens of thousands of Necron warriors, opposing the attack of seven hundred and seventy-two Space Marines. The battle inside the World Engine lasted for more than a hundred hours, the Space Marines methodically destroying every Flux generator, weapon forge and Command node in their path.
At the end, only Amhrad and five other marines were left alive, as they fought into the central command tomb. Amhrad’s last act was to detonate melta bombs inside the tomb, overloading its already strained control nodes, disabling the World Engine’s shields and many of its weapons systems. With the monster finally vulnerable, the remaining Imperial ships let fly with everything they had, tearing the enemy apart with multiple volleys of Cyclonic torpedoes.
In the aftermath, the Adeptus Mechanicus sifted the remains of the World Engine for useful technology, while, at the suggestion of Blood Angels Captain Aphael, the Ultramarines salvaged the wreck of the Tempestus and set it as a monument on Safehold, the last planet to be scoured clean by the World Engine. Inside the wreck an Imperial Shrine was raised containing statues of the 772 fallen Astral Knights.
Celestial Orrery
The Celestial Orrery is a device located at the heart of the Necron Crownworld of Thanatos and is considered one of the galaxy’s greatest treasures. It was crafted by the artisans of the Oruscar Dynasty long before the War in Heaven and is beyond any price in artistic value alone. This machine consists of a web of holograms and Necrodermiswith the various tiny, floating, glowing lights representing a star in the galaxy. Each of these are recorded in an intricate matrix record that contains the locations of every star in the cosmos.
An act that snuffs out any of these lights leads to its physical counterpart undergoing a supernova millennia before its time that destroys all the nearby worlds that circle it. Thus, the Celestial Orrery is capable of immense destructive power but the act of destroying a star must be done with careful consideration as it would as it would upset the natural order of the cosmos that could create a critical chain reaction. Through further manipulation, any imbalance can be rectified and returned to proper balance though this can take thousands of years of constant precise micromanagement.
Despite this great power, the Royal Court of Thanatos see themselves as gardeners of creation who dispassionately use the Orrery in a precise but sparing manner. They believe in only pruning the galaxy to prevent it from becoming overgrown and wild. However, the power represented by the Celestial Orrery has led to the Oruscar Dynasty waging wars to protect the device from falling into the hands of other Necrons or aliens.
Dolmen Gates
Dolmen Gates are living stone portals used by the Necron race that function by tapping into the Webway.
They were constructed during the closing stages of the War in Heaven with their design orchestrated by the C’tan known as Nyadra’zatha. The Burning One had long desired to take his eldtrich fires into the Webway itself and is known to have taught the Necrons how to breach its walls. A series of such devices were constructed which allowed the Necrons to turn the Old Ones’ greatest weapon against them, which greatly accelerated their defeat.
Their nature means that they are both unstable and uncontrollable when compared to natural entry points into the Webway. In an unknown way, the Webway even detects breaches into itself by the Dolmen Gates and moves to seal off the infected spur until the danger posed by it passes. Thus, any Necron entry into the Webway must move quickly to reach its destination, otherwise the network itself will bring about their destruction. In the aeons that have passed since the War in Heaven, the Dolmen Gates became lost or abandoned during the Great Sleep or destroyed by the Eldar whilst the Webway itself has become a tangled, broken labyrinth.
The remaining Dolmen Gates only grant access to a small portion of the Webway, with much of the network being sealed by the Eldar to prevent further contamination. Despite this being the case, the immeasurable length of the sundered Webway does allow the Necrons to outpace the modes of travel used by the younger races. As they are bereft of Psykers, the Necrons rely on this method of transportation as they are incapable of Warp travel. Thus, if they were denied the use of the Webway, the Necrons would be forced to make use of slow moving stasis-ships that would doom their civilization to isolation.
Learn More of the Necrons
