Editing C'tan (section)

==History==
===Oldcron lore (3rd edition)===
In their original incarnation in the 3rd Edition Necron Codex, the C’tan (Necrontyr for ‘Star God’) were born during the Big Bang. At this stage, they were immaterial energy entities born from suns, which they in turn fed upon. They were completely apart from material reality and spent most of their time consuming the energy of stars.

Eventually they were discovered by the Masters of Technology and ever bitter Necrontyr. The Necrontyr were obsessed with studying suns, since their own evolution had been so badly impacted by their home world's star, while their war against the Old Ones (another exceptionally advanced race who the Necrontyr had sought to exterminate out of spite) was going poorly and they were desperate to find a way to turn the tides. At this point the C’tan were barely sentient and effectively just semi-conscious clouds of energy but the Necrontyr found a way to transfer them into living metal bodies.

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 the proto-Necrontyr’s lives nasty, 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 instead out there; only then did it stop killing them. Soon other C'tan were found and also offered necrodermis bodies.

Now possessed of actual physical forms, the C’tan began to change. Firstly, they found feeding upon the electromagnetic pulses of living bodies to be much better than feeding upon stars (even if it required many, many more bodies to sate them). Secondly, they found being worshipped as Gods very satisfying. Given their immense power, the Necrontyr basically handed over the reins of their civilisation to these entities, and so enamoured by it the C’tan developed egos. As a result of this, and probably the fact such entities were beyond concepts like morality, the C’tan became sentient and exceptionally malevolent Gods.

The C’tan began to remake the Necrontyr in their image. Having reduced their population to largely willing slaves, the C’tan sought to expand their dominion and both dominate and feed on all life in the galaxy. Not much is known about their worshippers, except the Nightbringer's presence caused its worshippers to have horrifying visions of death in bloodshed that drove many insane, and The Deceiver was so popular it had to send some of its followers to worship the other C'tan for fear they'd get jealous. It was The Deceiver, though the Necrontyr knew it as The Messenger, who offered them a new way to exterminate their hated foes the Old Ones as well as escape their blighted physiology. Living metal bodies. The Necrontyr accepted. In this older edition, most of the Necrontyr weren't on board with making such a huge change [[Grimdark|but they were tricked or forced into it by The Deceiver's followers]]. In the end the Necrontyr ceased to exist and became the C’tan’s slaves, the Necrons.

The C’tan in turn battled the Old Ones for dominion of the galaxy, and with their own immense powers and the Necron’s amazing science, began to win. In turn the C’tan enslaved trillions – either to force them to worship them as gods, or to feed upon them in ‘Red Harvests’ (or both). Large chunks of the galaxy were reduced to a wasteland. As the harvests grew thin, the C’tan turned upon each other, in large part due to the Deceiver promising the Nightbringer that his fellow Star Gods essence would taste excellent. Eventually only four were left. The Deceiver, the Nightbringer, the Void Dragon and the Outsider.

At this stage the Old One’s desperate attempts to defeat the C’tan brought the clock to midnight. With the galaxy already devastated and much of the population consumed or enslaved, the Old One’s new races, populated by psykers, caused the warp to produce [[Daemon|malevolent entities]] eager to enslave and destroy reality. These began to pour into reality en mass. While the C’tan were pleased with this destroying the Old One’s civilisation, they panicked. Not only were they completely incapable of manipulating the warp, it was very much capable of destroying them, and likewise, leaving them with nothing to feed upon. The C’tan attempted to cut off the material reality from the warp but devastated by infighting and unable to handle the mass warp incursions, decided upon a new approach.

The C’tan and their Necron servants would retreat to tombs erected on dead worlds and wait out the galaxy becoming an arid wasteland until it bore new species – specifically those suited to becoming slaves and servants and food.

===Newcron lore (5th ed onwards)===

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, back then he was known simply as the Messenger. It was the Deceiver that convinced the Necrontyr they could escape their short lifespans and succeed in their battles against the [[Old Ones (Warhammer)|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. That's how they came to know his other trait - being a massive dickhead. Both figuratively and literally.

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 over nine thousand times weaker than full-strength C'tan, they are still rape machines of death and destruction, and some [[Necron Overlord]]s are arrogant enough to release them on their enemies like giant grimdark <s>[[Pokemon]]</s> attack animals. 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 himself 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 that 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.

And, according to most recent fluff, their necrodermis makes them look like a cross between Eldar and humans. So what the hell did the Necrontyr look like?