Origins of the Legions Version 2.0

I have gone away from my original story of the Origins of the Legions of Nekheny on the simple fact it didn't fit with the fluff of the 40k universe.  The humans barely have record of their history back to the founding of the Space Marine Legions, let alone the 30,000 years before that, so it pretty much impossible for my Necron to have found information back that far in the human records.  To correct this issue, I have decided to steal a piece of story line from the Star Trek the Motion Picture, V'Ger actually.  Who can say that the living machines that found V'Ger were not the Necrons.  And so follows the new basis for the Legions of Nekheny.

I probe launched from Terra before the days of Warp travel, from when humans were still trying to reach outside of their home star system, has traveled the vastness of space for millennium.  After a few centuries, the probe was to far from Terra for its broadcasts to reach home.  But the probe continued on with its duties, fusion and solar powered, it would last many millennium before powering down.  And so it traveled the heavens gathering the information it was programmed to gather and broadcast back to Terra, looking for inhabitable planets and other life, and it found both, but no one could hear it, and no one live on Terra would remember its existence.  Inside the probe contained the history of man to the point of its launch, and DNA from every form of life the humans could gather from their world.  The intent of the DNA being if the probe would crash onto a planet in its journey, it may start life or change life on the planet making colonization of the work easier for the humans if they ever happened upon it.

 And the probe continued on through the ages, always broadcasting its reports.  While passing through a new star system, an ancient star system with only dead worlds and star barely glowing, nearing complete burn out, something heard the probes broadcasts, something far more ancient than the probe its self.  With the system's star nearly dead, and the planets nearly solid at there core, after millennium of tectonic violence nothing should be stirring in the darkness and depths of the worlds, but things did, not living, at least not any more.  And so a Necron tomb world slowly started to awaken.  The violence fits of the dying star system had left the greatness of the tomb worlds here shattered and lying in ruin.  Their communications systems have been destroyed, a great amount of their stasis systems have failed, and the slow passing of time had claimed most of their race and constructs. But enough of the Necron systems remained to receive the broadcasts from the probe wandering through their dying system and started the great awakening.  Constructs began to stream through the Necron ruins, repairing and bring online what they could.  And the Necron High Lord of the system was awakened from his stasis.  His stasis was not peaceful, but millions of years of nightmares.  Dreams of his people's betrayal by their gods, and their curse to endless slavery.

The High Lord turned his attention to the construct passing his tomb, and he calculated in cold thoughts, "Had this construct not passed, if this infinitely small chance had not occurred, he and his people would have slowly turned to dust after their star had died."  The High Lord was furious to be awoken, to be robbed of his one chance to die and end his slavery.  And with a thought, the High Lord ordered the efforts of this awakening tomb world to ready what remained of his fleet to seize this construct that had ended his nightmares and made them his reality.  The madness of millions of years of existence, of unrelenting nightmares, wore heavy of the High Lord.  The High Lord himself went to take the construct, to bring his vengeance to bear upon the construct.  And as the High Lord stood on the hull of his tomb ship, staring at the simple machine, limited in its ability to think, to comprehend, only able to react in simple ways, like a lowly creature, hardly better than a single cell life form, taking in its environment, and sending it out to somewhere, to something.  This somewhere, something, created intrigue within the High Lord.  And the High Lord looked deeper into construct and began to decipher the simple language with in it.  And the origin of the construct revealed its self to the High Lord.  The entire history of humanity and Terra up to the launch of the construct unfolded before the High Lord and he saw the face of the of the constructs creator. 

The construct would not be the focus of his vengeance, the race that created the construct would be.  In the human's history the High Lord saw the influence of the lair, the deceiver, the betrayer, the star god Mephet'ran, the spearhead of the enslavement of the High Lord's race, and taker of death and the hope of escape.  And the High Lord studied the human history, and from the the period of Mephet'ran's greatest influence, the human's ancient Egyptians.  The High Lord would model his legions in a dark image of death taken from the human's own past to take his vengeance on the humans for cheating him of his long desired death.  It will be as if the skeletons of the Egyptians themselves would raise from the sands of the Terran desert to drag the humans to the darkness awaiting below the sands.  Yes for cheating the High Lord from his desired death, the humans will suffer, they will dream of death as he has.

There is a darkness rising from beneath dead worlds circling a dying star.  No longer will his legions gleam silver in the light, but walk as shadows of death and suffering, brandishing the golden dress of the ancient Egyptians gods.  And the High Lord took for himself the name and image of the sun god, the falcon god, Nekheny.  Now begins the rebuilding of the legions in a new image, and the raising of the tomb worlds and their great war machines.  May the galaxy join the Necrons in their misery.  Though Nekheny still has yet to learn that the galaxy is already a place of misery for all, ablaze in endless war, suffering, and death.  Still has yet to learn two of the star gods are already awaken and his slavery may not be over yet.

Progress of the Legions

Today I primed my twenty warriors and five scarabs.  Once my Deceiver is finished, I will have my 750 point list ready.  This list will continue my painting experiments and hopefully let me develop my modeling/painting skills to a worthy level before I open my "Necron Phalanx" box set or start on my Destroyers.   Let the Legions be born.  Once I have painted my 750 point list, I will post some pictures.

I have not yet thought of a better back ground story yet, but I will. Just haven't had the freedom of thought lately to work on it.

The Story Behind the Legions of Nekheny

While I was off serving my country, my employer did some layoffs due to the economy and poor financial management.  So when I came home, I still had a job, but at a lot less pay.  However, some is still better than nothing at this moment.  The job I have now I did about two and a half years ago, so they are making me go through all of the training again, a months long refresher course.  Needless to say I was bore immediately, and started scribbling stuff for my Necron army.  While messing around with different Necron hieroglyphs, I stumbled onto a way to make a bird from similar symbols in the codex.

Immediately I was thinking of the phoenix as I love that myth and was going to call my Tomb World Lord the "Phoenix Lord."  Then by Googling that title, I realized that there was already the "Phoenix Lords" of the Eldar and that killed my plans for that.  So I started researching ancient Egypt more, especially the gods and military organization.  I settled on Horus as the example for my Tomb World Lord, but chose a variant name of "Nekheny" that apparently means "falcon," and sounds more 'Cronish.  And so the Legions of Nekheny were born.  And thanks to boredom in class, Nekheny's recent story so far goes like this:

Driven mad by dreams in his long slumber, nay, by the nightmare of his people's double curse of immortally and eternal servitude to cruel and unloving gods.  Now this Great Lord of a Tomb World has awoke, to find his world much changed with no communication with any other Tomb World.  A new race infested the surface of his world, the humans.  Enraged by the squatting vermin on his world, he beings his cleansing of the Warp plagued humans, while ordering their primitive technologies secured to learn more of this new universe he has emerged into.  From the human records the Great Lord learns that the C'tan have made the humans chosen above all other races, not just as cattle to feed their endless appetite, but as the perfect beings through their creation of the Pariah.

But in the humans, the Great Lord saw a different future for his people.  If his people could be enslaved into their immortal machine bodies, maybe they could be freed into the human bodies, freed to a mortal existence, and freed to finally find the embrace of death.  Maybe the humans infected with this Pariah Gene could be their new hosts.  And so the Great Lord became obsessed with the humans and their history, seeking out all knowledge on them, raiding the human worlds and research stations.  In the human history of their ancient Egypt, the Great Lord saw the influence of the C'tan he served, Mephet'ran, the Great Deceiver.  The Great Lord obsessed with this time and civilization as when the humans may have become the chosen.  The Great Lord took the name "Nekheny," that of the ancient Egyptian's greatest god, symbolized as a falcon to its human worshipers, and in truth a form of the Great Deceiver.  And the Great Lord now Nekheny ordered his legions be recolored from their gleaming silver to a dark and deathly version of the ancient Egyptians.  Nekheny adopted the falcon as his symbol to be brandished by his legions to honor Nekheny and his quest to elevate and free his people, and rebuild their once great civilization.  Nekheny envisions a universe free of all but the human race, the C'tan destroyed, and the Warp forever separated from the material world.  Luckily the C'tan have a similar vision of the future save their own destruction and their Necron slaves returning to freedom and mortal lives through the humans.  But until the Great Works are done, the Legions of Nekhany continue to serve the Great Deceiver, waiting for their time to seize their freedom.

Beginnings of the Legions of Nekheny

I dreamed of a Necron army painted to meet the fluff in the Necron Codex, a beautiful mirror finished chrome.  This dream apparently is going to be expensive and time consuming, and money and a lot of free time is not something I have at the moment, so I went with my second favorite paint scheme idea based on a sort of ancient Egyptian scheme with black and gold as the colors.  Here is my first Necron attempt.

And here is my second attempt.

Pre-Necron Painting Test

Before I started painting my Necrons, I decided to test my skills on a few Space Marines from my Assault on Black Reach set.  I am looking to have a Space Marine army someday, so I tested some different color schemes.  Left to right is the order in which I painted them.  Not so good, but learning quickly.

My Space Marine army will be similar to the third model, the white and darker gold, their story to come in the future.

Warhammer 40000 and I

This is the story of how I came to Warhammer 40000.  About twenty years ago, I was playing Classic BattleTech and MTG at a local hobby shop.  I watched others play Warhammer Fantasy, 40000, and Blood Bowl there, and while I was interested, never played.  For basically the year of 2009, I was deployed to Kuwait, serving my country as they saw fit.  While there, my friend Z asked to play D&D, but I had tried it and was never able to get into it, too much imagination and making up stuff as you go along for me.  I prefer much more structured games, though I love fluff and creating background for my units, armies, whatever.  However, Z did get me into the Dawn of War computer game, and I loved playing the Necrons in it.  Then he asked to play table top 40k and we did.  We ordered a rule book and a few codex and got into it.  Playing on a table or a rug on the floor with bottle caps and cardboard cut outs as units and what ever we could find as terrain.  And so we played, with another roommate Bailey, and worked on learning the rules and the armies.  And I loved playing.  I tried a few armies and settled on the Necrons, loving their fluff and the We'll Be Back, as it can be so disheartening to your opponent.  We started ordering our armies online, having them delivered to our homes back in the states awaiting for us to come home.  I picked up Space Hulk to start getting my kids in to 40k as well.  They liked Space Hulk, and how I have Assault on Black Reach to see if they will be into the actual 40k.  We have yet to play, but I look forward to it.