Editing C'tan

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The C'tan (pronounced "Kit-tAhhhh n") are like the 40k version of Galactus: ancient and powerful Star Gods capable of warping reality when they're recently full from a buffet of planets inhabited by life. They were given physical bodies by the ancient Necrontyr. They are often called Star Vampires due to their feeding habits, as they are capable of 'nomming entire stars with ease, but soon they found living planets to taste better. Their vast power, however, is limited to the Materium; the Warp is anathema to them, as they cannot control or enter it, and being big babies decided if they can't play in Hyperspace-Hell nobody can <s>which probably makes them good guys in a sense though</s>. Before the concept was retconned, the C'tan tampered with humanity to inject the anti-psyker Pariah gene and probably built the Cadian Pylons that created the Cadian gate by forming a bubble of normality that cuts into the Eye of Terror. In 4th edition they were responsible for massive amounts of [[just as planned]]. 

And now they are <s>shards.</s> Pokemon.

(They are reforming however.)

==History==
The first C'tan was found "sucking" the energies of the Necrontyr planet's sun, the same sun that gave off enough hard radiation to make proto-Necrontyr life short, nasty, short, brutish, and short.

The Necrontyr formed a necrodermis body and coaxed the star-sucker to inhabit it.  This C'tan was later named '''The Nightbringer.'''  When the Nightbringer awoke in the new body, it noticed the Necrontyr for the first time and discovered they were like Chinese take-out: really yummy and spicy, more so than bland stars, but you could eat a few thousand and still feel hungry an hour later.  It took a while and much slaughter before the Necrontyr could convince the Nightbringer that they were more useful in servitude, and there were other yummy lifeforces to be eaten out there.

Other C'tan gods were discovered feeding on stars, but the most significant of these was named '''The Deceiver''' (not that other [[Tzeentch|Deceiver]]). Weaker than the others, The Deceiver is better at [[just as planned|leveraging other entities]] to do what it wants.  After inhabiting a necrodermis body, it adapted to the material world quickly and became very popular with the Necrontyr by means of cunning and guile - mind you, he probably didn't go around calling himself "the Deceiver" at this time. It was The Deceiver that convinced the Necrontyr they could escape their short lifespans and succeed in their battles against [[Old Ones]] by inhabiting necrodermis bodies themselves.  The Deceiver neglected to mention that these new [[Necrons]] would be insensate, dull-witted and easily manipulated by the C'tan.

During the Necrons' war against the Old Ones, the C'tan also fought amongst themselves, destroying the necrodermis bodies they used to have an effect on the material world.  After the Old Ones were rendered extinct, the Necrons turned on the few surviving, weakened C'tan, and tore them into a fuck-ton of shards which they then imprisoned in [[Tesseract Vault|Tesseract Labyrinths]]. While those shards are like nine million times weaker than full-strength C'tan, they are still rape machines of death and destruction, and some Necron Overlords are arrogant enough to release them on their enemies like giant grimdark [[Pokemon]]. Still, some of the shards managed to escape and even merge to regain part of their godlike power, some can even have their own mindless Necron slaves to justify some of the old fluff. Of course, the final goal of each unchained shard is to free all other shards of his kind and merge with them to form a god of pure murder and rape, capable of tearing apart entire sectors single-handedly. Though the Necrons are ever vigilant and constantly hunting the escaped shards.

tl/dr: They were once an energy based race of star-vampires, were then turned into metal gods of death, and are now slave warriors and hunted runaways trying to regain their former glory. Oh, how the mighty fall...

Some have, for varying reasons, considered the C'tan to have been gratuitously shoehorned into the setting, and claim that with the 5th edition Necron Codex they were put in their place. Make of that what you will.  Generally speaking the reason is more practical.  Oldcron C'tan were suppose to rival the Chaos Gods yet they weren't all the hard to table, making them look weak, and GW isn't all that into removing stuff with models, so they just claim there are weakened enslaved avatars.

== Transcendent C'Tan Shard==

A '''Transcendent C'Tan Shard''', introduced in [[Apocalypse]], is a C'tan Shard that has eaten/merged with/subsumed a large number of other Shards (between twelve and several hundred), becoming scary powerful in the process. In fact, it's ''so'' powerful, it's an Apocalypse-only Gargantuan creature as powerful as a [[Titan]]... all in a package the size of a regular C'tan. 

One of the most terrifying things is that a Transcendent Shard "calls" other shards of the same C'tan, hoping to absorb them and increase its own power in the process. Eventually, a loose Transcendent C'tan will reunite all loose Shards, becoming the original, nigh-on unkillable, godlike C'tan, which will no doubt be very angry at the Necrons for double-crossing them. Grimdark enough for you? No? Well, what if we told you [[Not as planned|there are ALREADY C'tan Shards on the loose]]? Some of them can even think for themselves. Remember the [[Uriel Ventris|Nightbinger of Pavonis]] or the "golden-skinned" being who guided [[Abaddon]] to Drach'Nyen? Or maybe a Dragon sleeping on Mars? 

Very few Necron dynasties have one, because it's very hard to keep something that powerful in check. It requires a massive Tesseract Vault to keep it ''barely'' contained. Despite this, there have been reports of particularly powerful/desperate/fucking stupid dynasties using the Transcendent shards without a Vault when the need arises. In this state, the risk of the Shard going rogue increases a thousandfold, so even [[Assholetep]] thinks twice about releasing such power, because if the Transcendent Shard escapes and reunites with the other Shards of itself, the full-fledged C'tan will return. And then, shit will get fucked up...

== Known C'tan ==

===Aza'Gorod, The Nightbringer===

Here to fuck your shit up.  The first C'tan revealed to inhabit realspace. Scared the crap out of a race/culture that was a threat to the race/culture that created all the other races in WH40K. Likes killing, killing and, well, killing. In short: [[Night Lords|batshit insane]] though in a different way than the Outsider.  Ate most of the other C'tan along with the Outsider, though he was convinced into doing so by the Deceiver while the Outsider was convinced by Cegorach, and is therefore known among his brethren as a team killing fucktard. Pretty much a giant, mechanical, space Grim Reaper that shoots lightning. He once battled the Eldar war god Khaela Mensha Khaine and lost, after which he was imprisoned for millennia. 

He was freed by [[Uriel Ventris]] and the [[Ultramarines]] 4th Company. And yes, that does mean the Ultrasmurfs have fucked over the entire galaxy on a scale not seen since the Eldar sexed Slaanesh into existence, but lets not get into that. The (Intelligent) Necrons under his authority tend to be the "silent, kill-every-living-thing" type with all the subtlety of an Angry Marine. In fact, they hate life so much that even bacteria and microbes must be purged from any active Tomb World they inhabit. 

(On a sidenote, the [[Skub|edit squabbles]] between the Necron-affiliated neckbeards and the Chaos-affiliated neckbeards over what basically amounted to a "who would win in a fight?" discussion about him and Khorne was ''hilarious'' for the unaffiliated to watch.)

When the Nightbringer was a model on the tabletop, he was the hardest thing to kill outside of Apocalypse with toughness 8, five wounds, and a 4+ invuln save. As a monstrous creature with S10 and loads of attacks, getting near him was a death sentence. The Nightbringer also appear in [[Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade]], sorta. The Necron Lord has the ability to turn into a manifestation of the Nightbringer, which skyrocketed his DPS (not as much as what Relic units had, but still high), but more importantly, he was INVINCIBLE while the ability was active, meaning the best an opponent could do was to hold it in place with a bunch of infantry until it wore off and hope it didn't kill anything too valuable.

===Mephet'ran, The Deceiver===

Mass dickery on a galactic scale that only [[Tzeentch]] could rival.  Got the bright idea of convincing the Necrontyr to turn themselves into the zombie-mummy-skeleton-robots known as <strike>Tomb Kings</strike> Necrons.  Rumored to have implanted the Pariah Gene into humans to help combat the forces of the Warp. Spends his days taking part in "Just as planned" contests with Tzeentch, The Emprah and [[Cegorach]] the Laughing God, which no one really wins in the end as everything they do results in a paradox. The Eldar refer to the Deceiver as "The Jackal God", because they apparently had jackals in outer space millions of years ago, and just happened to identify them with the exact same trickster label we did (Or maybe it's a "meaning" translation); The Necrontyr, however, called him Mephet'Ran, or "the messenger", making him the Necrontyr equivalent of Hermes or Thoth, hence his golden six-pack (or Nyarlathotep, hence his rampant douchebaggery). The (Intelligent) Necrons under his command tend to be sneaky and manipulative bastards with many of the Necron Lords under his command occupying many important positions in the Imperium of man and are the type of Necrons most likely to stop and chat with you, the second most common type.  One of them infiltrated the Inquisition and set himself up as Inquisitor Raleigh of the [[Alienhunters|Ordos Xenos]] in Xenology as part of a plot to learn humanity's greatest weakness, which turned out to be knowledge since humans are insatiably curious fucks which isn't actually that far from the truth. The Deceiver may have given [[Failbaddon]] his beloved daemon sword Drach'nyen in an almost Tzeentchian scheme. This would, as stated above, make Abaddon too powerful to be killed and replaced as Warmaster, and therefore ensure that only Abaddon (<strike>and his massive degrees of incompetence</strike> not really, see the Black Legion supplement) would ever be at the head of the Traitor Legions.  In the old fluff, it is confirmed that the Deceiver DID give the armless Despoiler two Blackstone Fortresses. These are gigantic Eldar spaceships that can destroy stars and can kill a C'tan because it is essentially a massive Distort weapon floating in space, and as the C'Tan cannot exist within or interact with the warp, a Distort weapon will kill them instantly as anything caught in its radius is torn between the warp and realspace, potentially even sucking them in entirely.  This more than anything is what has probably kept Abaddon in power. The Deceiver would also much rather they were owned by people that didn't know what they truly are rather than the Eldar or anyone affiliated with them who could reactivate and utilize the Distort weapon.

Little known fact is that The Man With No Name was the Deceiver. Seriously.

Also seeing how he gave the Silent King full control of both his mind and total control of the Necron Forces, it implies he knew the Silent King was going to turn on the C'tan, and seeing how most free Shards seem to be the Deceiver it would imply he's running around trolling others all over the place, like SG-1's Baal with all his clones.  

When The Deceiver was a model, he was bit weaker in combat than the Nightbringer, but still deadly. Rather than getting into melee, however, his abilities were based on a bunch of illusory tricks that fucked with the enemies' heads, like forcing them to take a pinning test even if they were fearless. Similar to the Nightbringer, the Necron Lord in Soulstorm can turn into a manifestation of the Deceiver. It couldn't dish out nearly as much damage as the Nightbringer, but was still invincible and could do a bunch decieve-y stuff like temporarily take control of an enemy squad or create a fake monolith. The ability shared cooldown timers with the Nightbringer ability, but was considered overpowered regardless.

===Mag'ladroth The Void Dragon===

The Void Dragon can exert control over any machine, making him the most influential C'tan when at full power. It has been theorized that the [[Emperor]] battled the Void Dragon and successfully managed to put it to sleep under Mars. He didn't kill the Dragon, [[Just as planned|instead using its influence to give humanity mastery over machines]]. Extended from this theory, it is believed by some that the [[Omnissiah]] fervently worshiped by the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] is actually the Void Dragon, as he's supposedly the entity that causes the ramshackle excuse for technology the Imperium has to work properly.  There's also an Eldar legend of their forge god Vaul failing to destroy the Dragon, only managing to force its hibernation in the so-called "Vaul Moon," although that could, in fact, be Mars itself. In case you're wondering how powerful he is, note that he was once shot at by <i>multiple</i> Blackstone Fortresses simultaneously (keeping in mind that even a single Blackstone Fortress can [[Exterminatus|destroy a planet]] Death Star-style); all this managed to do was make him sleepy. Vaul, meanwhile, allegedly attacked the Dragon with an army at his back and was never heard from again. This is probably the only reason the Emperor was able to defeat the Dragon; it was just tired fro- {{BLAM|'''*BLAM!* HERESY!'''}} In short, powerful as FUCK. The Necrons under his command are probably massive technophiles with a raging hard-on for machines....then again, they're already machines, so that would be expected, but they're probably even <b>bigger</b> technophiles than their fellows and emphasize their mechanicalness over their undeadness.

For some reason, it can talk to human children, like Gamera, and sometimes involuntarily gives them power to heal and manipulate machinery like him.

If this asshole were to ever wake up, the Imperium would go to shit within minutes. Mars would die, Terra would die, <s>Empy would die</s> {{BLAM|'''*BLAM!* HERESY! THE EMPRAH IS A GOD, HE CAN NEVER DIE'''}} <s>(actually it'd be heresy to call him a god, he specifically told them no NOT worship him as a god)</s> {{BLAM|'''BLAM! HERESY!'''}}, the Astronomican would die, and the entire Imperium would no longer be capable of FTL and any form of communication as a result. In short, sitting ducks.

If you want to play him in an army, simply buy a Balrog or a Daemon Prince (make sure to give the latter wings), paint it suitably black, silver and green,  and take Trans-dimensional Thunderbolt and any other power that sounds like it screws with reality. Have fun.

May or may not be related to T'Otheron, Dragon King of Mars from [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain/strips/ggmain20030811.jpg Girl Genius].

===Tsara'noga, The Outsider===

Ate at the same C'tan-cannibalism salad bar as the Nightbringer but did so due to the dickery of [[Cegorach]] the Laughing God instead of the dickery of the Deceiver, but feels bad about it; blames Eldar gods for his bad eating habits.  Decided to say "screw you guys, I'm taking my ball and leaving," and currently lives in a Dyson Sphere outside the galaxy.  A hive fleet of [[Tyranid|Tyranids]] decided to go AROUND this place, not just ignore it like Tyranids do with Necron tomb-worlds.  Were the Tyranids scared?  Dunno, it's safer to lick a bandsaw than stop to ask a Tyranid. Other beings prefer to blow their own brains out rather then look at the Outsider when he's in town. Grimdark.  The (intelligent) Necrons under his command are probably batshit insane. Also to note, it is theorized HE IS THE HIVEMIND of the Tyranids, needless to say, if this is true the galaxy is screwed.
The one other story we have about him, to my knowledge, is once while Eldrad was trolling around the galaxy he found a system with a Dyson Sphere with a massive psykic void around it. Believing it to be the main Temple world of the Culexus assassins he planned to assault and destroy it, but was struck with a vision that attempting to assault the world would result in the destruction OF THE ENTIRE ULTHWE CRAFTWORLD AND ALL ITS INHABITANTS. Eldrad proceeded to leave the world the fuck alone.
You do not mess with The Outsider.

===Nyadra'zatha, The Burning One===

Gee, I bet you can't guess what his shtick is. Hint: it involves [[Webway]] gates. Wait, what? Yeah, apparently the Burning One was the C'tan that told the [[Necrons]] how to break into the Dolmen Gates and troll the [[Old Ones]] on their own turf. He was implemented to give more background to the "Lord of Fire" ability, but many [[neckbeard|neckbeards]] believe that [[Games Workshop]] added him specifically to make us argue about whether or not he's [[Khaine]]. Whether or not this is true, [[troll|you should absolutely use an Avatar of Khaine to represent a C'tan Shard with Lord of Fire and laugh when your opponent's Fire Dragon Exarch's meltagun blows up in his face.]]
*Oh, and in case you didn't get it: he's a pyromaniac asshole. The only reason he wanted to go into the Webway was to burn the fuck out of it.

===Iash'uddra, The Endless Swarm===

Nothing is known about this guy but his name. Contrary to some fa/tg/uys belief, he is not a reference to [[Tau Quest]], but rather to the old fan theory in which the Tyranids were led by a C'tan. Again, GW is actively trying to make us argue and fanwank, the trollan fucks.

Of course if you don't want to subscribe to GW's fuckery it could be where the Scarabs come from, since they are, arguably, a huge swarm of mechanical undead bugs.

===Llandu'gor, The Flayer===

Llandu'Gor is responsible for the [[Flayed Ones]]. The Necrons sharded him so hard he completely died, but he managed to infect thousands of Necrons with his hunger as a final dick move, turning them into warped ghouls with a gore fetish and teleportation powers. Which basically means that he has millions of Necrons under his influence, and that this number is continuously growing, because the Flayer Curse is contagious.

The exact wording of the curse is as follows:

"To those who have turned their faces away. To those who are faithless and wretched in their jealousies. To those who have denied us. To those who have denied me. I will wreak vengeance. I will wrench your souls and break your bones. I will cast hunger through your accursed existence. Down the eons, you will not forget. I will grant you this gift from love turned aside and make you like me, break you in my image as you have broken me. I shall cast the fear of myself into you and all of your kind. I am Llandu’gor. I am the hunger. I am the flayer, and from this moment, you shall be too."

== Gallery ==
If someone actually fields these miniatures on the table, you're getting screwed. Unless you manage to bring up an equivalent (or play [[Dark Eldar]], in which case it falls to two Venoms), in which case, get some Meatbread and enjoy yourself!
<gallery>
Image:C'Tan The Nightbringer.gif|I AM THE NIGHT... bringer?
Image:C'Tan The Deceiver.gif|GOLDEN SIXPACK
Image:Poor Imperial Heartworlds.gif|If only Forgeworld would hurry up and give the Necrons a Titan sized C'tan
Image:Void dragon.jpg|<s>Too literal?</s> NOT LITERAL ENOUGH! AND NOT EPIC ENOUGH! (This picture actually depicts a dragon from [[Guild Wars]] 2. Because GeeDubs couldn't bother releasing official artwork.)
Image:Night Bringer by PabelBilly.jpg|You can't spell "reap" without RAEP
Image:Void dragon necrons.jpg|For those of us stuck in the past Crypteks might as well be Dragoncrons.
</gallery>

{{Necrons-Forces}}

[[Category:Necrons]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Gods]]