Necrons from w40k

[Archael90]

I need some help to create and roleplay Necrons from w40k.
So i came up with idea of Necroid spiritualist empire that will embrace synthetic evolution. I can roleplay that scientists effort to bring massive special project of turning every living necron into immortal machine is in fact a deal with diety, and it will be difficult, but i can imagine that all that materialist pops that will shows up are in fact spiritualists, and thats okay i just need some imagination.
But I need some advices about empire creation and early game since Necrons will be true Necrons only after synthetic evolution in mid/late game, so i need some advices about before that.
What origin, ethics, civics and species traits? General gameplay and what mechanical traits i should give them.
I was thinking about death cult and reanimators, but maybe you can came up with something better
Thanks

 

[Verx90]

necrons are obviusly Rogue Servitor machine empires .




if you want to play lore-wise , i guess you have to start as a normal spiritualist empire and have a synthetics ascension

 

[GloatingSwine]

necrons are obviusly Rogue Servitor machine empires .




if you want to play lore-wise , i guess you have to start as a normal spiritualist empire and have a synthetics ascension

You could do Trazyn the Infinite as a rogue servitor, but necrons in general aren't a collective consciousness. They're a synth ascension that went wrong because the spiritualists were right and you can't transfer your soul.

 

[Mastikator]

So xenophobe militarist authoritarian synth ascension with a colossus and wants to kill everyone? Imperial authority

 

[GloatingSwine]

So xenophobe militarist authoritarian synth ascension with a colossus and wants to kill everyone? Imperial authority

You can go weirder

Xenophobe Militarist Authoritarian with Fleeting, psionically ascend and do a covenant with the end of the cycle, research synths and populate at least one planet with only them and find some way to get rid of all of your founder pops.

 

[Objulen]

I'm not sure why Necrons would be spiritualists, but Synth Ascension would fit their origins. Given the limited sentience of many Necrons - only the higher classes received bodies that were capable of containing their entire personalities - an ME could also work. Necrons don't really work with organics, except as vassals or slaves, or care for them, Rogue Servitors don't really fit, but it's not impossible. Determined Exterminators would fit a dynasty overtaken by the Destroyer's madness.

 

[Devanor]

If we're going all in on the roleplay, pick Overtuned as origin and take as many science bonus traits that you dare: the Necrontyr were short lived after all, even after leaving their hellish starsystem.

 

[st360]

Why would Necrons be in any way spiritualist? The only "spiritualist" thing I can remember from them is that they "lost their souls" in their ascension process, and even that is false.

As far as I know, high ranking Necrons are completely fine, its just that for economic reasons the lower rank Necron masses where uploaded into simplistic mechanical brains and have lost most of their sentience due to hardware limitations. There is literally a in game example of this, where you can try to download a dead species neural pathway databases into robot and droid bodies, and they end up just being regular robots/droids because the neural pathways where too complex for the robot/droid bodies.

No Stellaris trait is mandatory for Necroids, other than taking synth ascension, and maybe the - lifespan and - habitability traits. Maybe authoritarian or imperial cult, but they aren't even unified under a emperor in the present.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I'm not sure why Necrons would be spiritualists, but Synth Ascension would fit their origins. Given the limited sentience of many Necrons - only the higher classes received bodies that were capable of containing their entire personalities - an ME could also work. Necrons don't really work with organics, except as vassals or slaves, or care for them, Rogue Servitors don't really fit, but it's not impossible. Determined Exterminators would fit a dynasty overtaken by the Destroyer's madness.

They aren't, but end of the cycle is the best way to represent their deal with the C'tan and the way they were tricked into the biotransference.

Why would Necrons be in any way spiritualist? The only "spiritualist" thing I can remember from them is that they "lost their souls" in their ascension process, and even that is false.

As far as I know, high ranking Necrons are completely fine, its just that for economic reasons the lower rank Necron masses where uploaded into simplistic mechanical brains and have lost most of their sentience due to hardware limitations. There is literally a in game example of this, where you can try to download a dead species neural pathway databases into robot and droid bodies, and they end up just being regular robots/droids because the neural pathways where too complex for the robot/droid bodies.

No Stellaris trait is mandatory for Necroids, other than taking synth ascension, and maybe the - lifespan and - habitability traits. Maybe authoritarian or imperial cult, but they aren't even unified under a emperor in the present.

Nah, most of their souls didn't transfer because the C'tan ate them.

 

[Objulen]

They aren't, but end of the cycle is the best way to represent their deal with the C'tan and the way they were tricked into the biotransference.

I disagree. That would be the Fall of the Eldar, which destroyed most of their species and spawned Slaanesh. When the End of the Cycle hits, it destroys your empire, just like the Eldar, and spawns a horribly powerful Shroud entity that eats other empires, similar to Slaanesh.

The Necrons, on the other hand, just ended up being tricked into Synth Ascension in a setting that doesn't look kindly on those who aren't spiritualists. They were duped mostly because they can't reproduce - they don't have the AI technology to create new Necron personalities despite their unmatched science, so no new Necrons - and most of their species weren't given synthetic bodies that could support having an actual personality, effectively lobotomizing everyone except the upper echelons of Necron society, all so the C'tan could feast on their discarded souls. Perhaps we can assume that the Necron's can't actually upgrade an existing unit's synthetic brain for some reason.

If we mirror the War in Heaven, the event would be a sort of failed Synth Ascension, where you can't make new pops, All your worker pops are Nerve Stapled, and you spawn several friendly End of Cycle equivalent units to stomp your enemies.

 

[viola]

Necrons are kind of sentient machines that are not quite a gestalt consciousness. Their leadership is composed of individuals who do whatever they want. Unless you wait for synth ascension you can't quite play as that kind of machine empire, which I think is a bit of a shame.

 

[Kapitalisti]

So i came up with idea of Necroid spiritualist empire

The Necrons/Necrontyr were most certainly not Spiritualists, especially in the Stellaris sense. Even in the flesh they had very little sense of the Warp/Shroud, as opposed to the Old Ones they fought against.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I disagree. That would be the Fall of the Eldar, which destroyed most of their species and spawned Slaanesh. When the End of the Cycle hits, it destroys your empire, just like the Eldar, and spawns a horribly powerful Shroud entity that eats other empires, similar to Slaanesh.

It's also what the C'Tan did to the Necrontyr then Old Ones. They bootstrapped themselves using the Necrontyr souls to being able to drive around the galaxy eating most of the Old Ones' empire, and when they were finished with that the remaining Necrons ganked them.

The Necrontyr weren't "into" synth ascension, they were just looking for any way to escape their short and torturous lives on the vile hellworld on which they lived (and to which the Old Ones beat them back when they tried to fight them the first time). They made a deal with the C'Tan which turned out to have been a very silly idea.

 

[Jedras]

So i came up with idea of Necroid spiritualist empire that will embrace synthetic evolution. I can roleplay that scientists effort to bring massive special project of turning every living necron into immortal machine is in fact a deal with diety, and it will be difficult, but i can imagine that all that materialist pops that will shows up are in fact spiritualists, and thats okay i just need some imagination.

Necrontyr (and later Necrons) were definitely not spiritualist. C'tan can't really be treated as gods in the spiritualist sense as they relied on technology rather than Warp (or Shroud in Stellaris) and so did the Necrons
I'd flavour it as a materialist militarist xenophobes going for synth ascension, with weak and fleeting traits to represent them being 50% cancer cells and intelligent+natural physicists to show their technological advancement

 

[Objulen]

It's also what the C'Tan did to the Necrontyr then Old Ones. They bootstrapped themselves using the Necrontyr souls to being able to drive around the galaxy eating most of the Old Ones' empire, and when they were finished with that the remaining Necrons ganked them.

The Necrontyr weren't "into" synth ascension, they were just looking for any way to escape their short and torturous lives on the vile hellworld on which they lived (and to which the Old Ones beat them back when they tried to fight them the first time). They made a deal with the C'Tan which turned out to have been a very silly idea.

The Eldar were all but wiped out by the Fall and the creation of Slaanesh. That's what actually happens with the End of the Cycle. The C'tan and the Necrons were allies in the War of Heaven until the Old Ones were defeated, then the Necrons turned on the C'tan. That's the opposite of what happens with the End of the Cycle. where the spawned Shroud entity is hostile to you (and everyone else).

The Necrons were converted to synths of various levels of quality and continued to exist as a species afterwards with no stated reduction to their population or worlds. It's basically a stilted synth Ascension. That isn't changed by the fact that the C'tan tricked and used them to fight the Old Ones and cultivate "farms" of souls to devour.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

Wouldn't they be Necrophage Spiritualist who take Cybernetic ascension?

 

[Kapitalisti]

Wouldn't they be Necrophage Spiritualist who take Cybernetic ascension?

Not spiritualists. Also not necrophages.

 

[Archael90]

Not spiritualists. Also not necrophages.

Why not spiritualists? They worshiped c'tan as gods, and then they accepted immortality from their gods, they wanted to become like them. And fact that c'tan bodies was made of living metal, and Necrons are more like synths does not means they had no faith and did not worship gods in which they seek immortality.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

The process of taking the species and necronizing it really sounds like Necrophage. Especially if you make them lithoid for the extra hit points and longer lifespans. Then the prepatent species would be the nonadaptive, weak, fleeting organic folk that either get elevated or necropurged.

 

[Kapitalisti]

Why not spiritualists? They worshiped c'tan as gods, and then they accepted immortality from their gods, they wanted to become like them. And fact that c'tan bodies was made of living metal, and Necrons are more like synths does not means they had no faith and did not worship gods in which they seek immortality.

Just generally having deities doesn't make a civ Spiritualist any more than having a fleet makes them Militarist. Also the Necrontyr made those bodies for the C'tan. And of course they most damn certainly don't worship them considering they killed the C'tan. But nothing about the Necrons/Necrontyr strikes as Spiritual in the sense Stellaris uses the term. Fanatic Authoritarian, yes.