Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

= The Silent King and the Necron Star Empire =

When the Necrons had wiped the sleep out of their eyes and came out of the auto-pilot, the Silent King arose to speak for the largest faction of them, and there was hope that there would have been (at least initially) the possibility of diplomatic dialogue.

I can also imagine it pissing off the Eldar citizens of the Imperium enormously. They would find it incredible that they can't adequately communicate how fucking stupid humanity can be at times.

Agreements would be reached. In much the same way that the Maiden Worlds are off limits to settlers without Eldar permission that they never give so too would the Tomb Worlds be treated. With everyone staying off of everyone else lawn things start to run smoother for a time. Emperor starts making deals with the lesser lords for including them in the mutual protection deals. Shit is looking hopeful. Crypteks are refusing to share toys and know how but such things would be used to keep the citizenry safe anyhow so it would amount to more or less the same.

Shit starts to go bad when the Necrons refuse to keep their Flayed Ones under control. Refuse to even apologize. Flayed Ones are still Necrons and even one of their damaged kind is worth a million lesser lives.

"Renegade" Crypteks keep abducting civilians for experiments.

Freshly awakened Necrons keep going about their genocidal business and the other Necrons refuse to keep them contained until their wits are awoken. They claim that the Sleep Walkers haven't actually broken any Necron Laws and that the Imperium should be grateful they are turning a blind eye to their half-slumbering brethren being shot at.

Then the Silent King returns after a long time absents and demands over a trillion human citizens every century for use in experiments to undo the bio-transference. By his estimations the dent in the human population would be more than recovered in the century allowed for recovery. In a great display of generosity the Emperor would be permitted to choose who of his people would have the honour of being sacrificed in this glorious endeavor. If taken evenly from the breadth of the Imperium their loss wouldn't even be felt.

At that point Emperor apologizes to the Eldar and admits that they were indeed right.

Necrons are added to the same list as Orks and Tyrannids in regards to how they should be treated.

The remains of the Silent King's messenger was returned in something resembling a paper soup cup and that was the last message the Emperor ever sent to the Silent King that wasn't delivered via weaponry.

Silent King owns the allegiance of many Lords and has a personal army bigger than any two lords combined.

He can be dealt with, or more correctly talked to. Sadly he doesn't understand the concept of give and take. He wants something, you give it to him. You refuse and he fuck your shit up. The Imperium fought him to a standstill when he demanded tribute in human, eldar and demiurge lives for his biotransferance reversal experiments. He points out that it would be less than a trillion lives all told. Imperium have population in the tens of quadrillions and they would take in small amounts from across galaxy, it would not be noticed.

Holy shit was the Emperor furious at that one. Folk legend say that all the astropaths across entire galaxy started swearing and yelling obscenities in over a hundred languages.

There was not even a pretenses at proportional response from either side. Silent King did have the real doomsday shit on standby and was prepared to use it, unfortunate for him he didn't anticipate the sheer fucking incandescent wroth made manifest with vortex weapons that took out his doomsday weapons before he could dickslap the big red button.

After that diplomatic relations, minimal as they were, completely dried up.
There are other lords who have rebelled against the Silent Kings.

Ones who spent thousands of years in obedience to his whims and have no interest in rebuilding the old empire because the old empire was BORING AS FUCK and then they see the bright lights of the Imperium and decide they want that. They want the hustle and bustle and music and noise and the lights and the crowds and the chatter and the music and to live and feel alive in a living empire rather than some shit Empire of the Dead.

Some don't support his plans to undo the biotransferance. The ones with good memories that remember what it was like to be racked with cancers and illness due to their fucked up biology and irreparable genes.

Some are just too fucking nuts to care about anything and ascribing meaning to their actions is impossible.

The Necron Star Empire as a whole is post-scarcity, post-singularity, post-individual, and post-heroic. Individuality only exists so long as it serves to advance the interests of the Silent King. The Necrons obey the Silent King in a manner that seems half exaltation and half mind control, moving to fulfill his wishes wholeheartedly without a word on the Silent King's behalf. It is entirely possible that Szsrekh was unable to sever the control protocols in this universe like he was in canon. Most of the Necron Lords who reject the rule of the Silent King are those who either just plain crazy or reject the idea of post-individuality and post-age of heroes and gods (e.g., Trazyn the Infinite and his collecting habit).

The Silent King, and therefore by extension the Necron Star Empire, has two, very simple goals. Clean up the mess the Necrons made during the War in Heaven by using the Cadian Pillars to separate the Warp and realspace to starve out Chaos and return the Immaterium to its previous state, and reverse the bio-transference. In almost any other circumstance, these goals would be noble, admirable even, if it were not for the fact that achieving them would result in the death of every living thing in the galaxy with a soul and making FTL travel impossible for most races. The Silent King is not doing this out of malice. He merely feels there is no way to fix the galaxy without wiping out its current inhabitants as a side effect.

Very little has been written about the Silent King personally. One idea that was floated and seemingly liked is that Szerakh came to the throne at a relatively young age for a Necrontyr, kind of like Tutankhamun, after his father was assassinated. Everyone assumed he would be a pushover. He would end up being, for better or worse, the most accomplished ruler in Necrontyr history and the ones to drag multiple pantheons of gods from their thrones.

== The Necron Star Empire and the Old Ones ==

So far, it has been deliberately left murky as to which side, if either, of the War in Heaven was “right”. Trazyn's story of the reasoning behind the War in Heaven is definitely Necron-biased, but then again it is being told by Trazyn the Infinite.

Indeed, it’s possible that both may have been in the right, and both may have been in the wrong. The Necrontyr might have genuinely thought they were doing the right thing, but they were still massively projecting their own issues onto someone else. The whole “liberate the galaxy from the Old Ones” might have been what the Necrontyr higher ups actually told the general populace to unite them, since people are more willing to die for a righteous cause than a petty one. The Phaerons might have even believed it themselves to some degree.

The Old Ones may have had genuinely benevolent intentions towards the rest of the galaxy, but they were still, as one anon put it “space lizard wizards with no sense of right and wrong” who were oblivious to the fact that their actions might have been interpreted differently by an outside observer. The Old Ones might have left the Necrontyr as is in the hopes that the harsh conditions of their homeworld would force the Necrontyr to rapidly evolve into a technologically advanced species, especially if their goals were similar to canon. It completely slipped their minds what the Necrontyr’s reaction would be when they found out the Old Ones were watching the whole time. When the Necrontyr left the confines of their star system the Old Ones’ response was “Congratulations, you passed the test” whereas the Necrontyr’s reaction was along the lines of “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The War in Heaven may have started out with both races considering themselves having the moral high ground, but then they started crossing lines and breaking their own moral codes and it was downhill from there. The War in Heaven starting out on both sides as an internally justified and noble cause, but then devolving into a complete clusterfuck.

=== The Old Ones ===

==== About the Old Ones ====

The Old Ones were a species of sapient, three-eyed amphibians, [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Society_and_Culture#The_Etymological_Legacy_of_the_Old_Ones|who called themselves Slann in their own tongue]]. However, like toads or some Paleozoic amphibians despite being amphibious they had no problems staying out of the water for extended periods of time and had a dry leathery or warty skin rather than a slimy one. In spite of this, they returned to the water to breed and had a tadpole-like larval stage, though by the time they ascended they had ceased all need for such functions and references to this mostly existed as cultural idioms. When they were still material the Old Ones did have small, blunt hornlets, though after ascending they could basically look however they want and each individual tailored their appearance to their own subjective idea of what they wanted to look like. Be'lakor's wings and huge horns are because, like everything else in his life, he is overcompensating for something. [[Archaon|It's been suggested Be'lakor's horns in this universe are more forward curving like in depictions of Archaon to make him look less like a Bloodthirster painted black.]]

The Old Ones as a species basically won the evolutionary lottery due to two key features. The first was their third eye, which like the "third eye" (pineal gland) of Terran reptiles helped track the passage of time and gave them a natural edge in comprehending a realm where the laws of causality are loose. Whereas to humans and other races the changing rates of the passage of time is disorienting and confusion, to the Old Ones it was no different from moving in any other three dimensions. Which isn’t to say they could time travel, just that they could perceive when time was speeding up, slowing down, or reversing. Which explains how the Navigators do it. Because the Old Ones had an advantage in a realm which they could literally shape to their whims even more than realspace, they paid less attention to the material sciences, which is how the relatively primitive Necrontyr Star Empire was able to fight them. The Old Ones were so dependent on the Warp yanking their mastery of the Warp out from under them made the fight substantially easier. It would be like if a third-world country invented a device which stopped computers and internal combustion engines from working.

Secondly, the Old Ones as a species were also characterized by “cold blooded logic”. This meant that while they had emotions they were tremendously mentally stable and able to manipulate the emotionally volatile Realm of Souls much more easily and skillfully than almost any species before or after, it gave them the emotional intelligence of a wet paper bag. The effects of this can be seen when the Necrontyr demanded immortality as recompense for the Old Ones knowing they had been suffering on an irradiated hellhole for millions of years and did nothing. The Old Ones told them the Necrontyr were not ready for immortality, and they had a point. Immortality requires a lot of forethought and maturity. You have to figure out how you are going to distribute resources, deal with population growth, etc. The Necrontyr didn't even have their own house in order. The Old Ones assumed the Necrons would hear their words, logically come to the same conclusion as they had, and calmly accept it. They didn't expect the Necrontyr to take it personally, [[Mortarion|see it as dismissing their suffering]], in the Old Ones' eyes emotionally overreact, and declare war on them.

This only got worse after the Necrontyr managed to make some of the Old Ones, who as individuals had been fixtures of society for millions of years, actually die. This caused the Old Ones, who weren't used to being so emotional, to freak out and contributed to a lot of knee-jerk, short-sighted decisions. Like uplifting a bunch of races to do the fighting so they didn't have to. Or making Khorne.

The Old Ones are also, as their name might suggest incredibly, mind-bendingly, old. There’s a reason that even the eldar, whose Old Empire lasted 65 million years before it imploded, consider the Old Ones to be much more ancient and advanced than they ever were. The Old Ones were, as far as anyone knows, the oldest sentient forms of life in the galaxy. The C’tan don’t count, although they existed since the dawn of the universe and had the potential for sentience they did not truly become sentient until they gained physical form by the Necrontyr and were able to perceive the world in terms of more than simple stimuli. To the Old Ones, the C’tan were nothing more than interesting wildlife and environmental hazards until the Necrontyr weaponized them.

As a point of reference, consider that Khorne was born 65 million years ago, and his birth hole, the Maelstrom, is still open today. Tzeentch, Malal, and Nurgle are all older than that, and there don’t appear to be any birth wounds that can readily be attributed to them. It could be argued that they may not have produced one as their birth was not as violent as Slaanesh or Khorne’s was, and Nurgle in particular would be more likely to drag his birth cradle into a zone of stagnancy in the Warp than create a new hole in reality, but if not these three would have to be at least as old as the dawn of the Cretaceous Era. And Be’lakor, as the first Old One to truly step between the bounds of mortality and immortality, even if he was massively passed up and outdated by everyone and everything that came after, would predate even that.

Indeed, this is what led the Old Ones to develop their particular philosophy. The Old Ones are distinct anti-nihlists. When they first set out into the stars, they found that there was nothing there, no higher purpose, no meaning, and a lot more lifeless worlds than one would expect from 40k (the implication being that the surprisingly high number of habitable worlds are due to the Old Ones). So they decided to make their own purpose, by devoting themselves to spreading life (especially sentient life) everywhere they could and making the galaxy flourish. Of course, they were still amoral lizard wizards with no sense of right and wrong, so how they went about doing this could be somewhat dubious at times. For example, leaving the Necrontyr on their homeworld in the hopes it would make them evolve quicker because the Old Ones were lonely and wanted another species they could talk to and pass their wisdom on to, which led the Necrontyr to see the Old Ones as playing god with everyone else.

==== How other species see the Old Ones ====

The Imperium tends to lionize the Old Ones a bit more than they should, mostly due to the influence of the eldar, who looked up to the Old Ones during the War in Heaven. The Imperium tends to project its own moral values onto the Old Ones, thinking that the race that left the Necrontyr to suffer on a radiation-blasted world, [[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Tarellian Religion|left off mortal representatives of their uplifted races in their stone carvings]], and [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Rise_of_Khorne|intentionally created Khorne]] had the same moral compass as them. It's more likely you have a situation similar to the Forerunners in [[Halo]], with some Old Ones who were benevolent and some who were cruel, but the species as a whole seem to have had a number of assholes. After all, [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Be'lakor|look at the one who survived]].

The Eldar claim the Old Ones willed them dominion over the galaxy when they died. It’s unclear where they got this idea, because the Old Ones sure as hell weren’t planning to die during the War in Heaven, and it's unlikely they thought their servant races would survive in any scenario where they themselves would not. There are several potential options here. One is that this is simply another case of the eldar exaggerating about their own history to give themselves legitimacy in their claims to the galaxy. Indeed, it's possible the Eldar came to the conclusion that "this is our galaxy now" when they stuck their head out of the Webway after the War in Heaven and found that all of the other races were either gone or regressed, and over sixty-five million years the historical cause and effect was lost. Another is that the Old Ones were even bigger bastards than anyone thought and told their servant races this as a false motivator. A third possibility is that the Old Ones intended all of their uplifted races to share the galaxy in the event they died, and the Eldar twisted or misinterpreted the meaning to mean just them. Or possibly the Old Ones meant that the galaxy would be theirs (as in, the Old Ones plus the servant races) collectively, with [[Slann|the servant races under the guiding yet iron-firm hand of the Old Ones]]

The Old Ones made the Webway, as well as several other high-power artifacts. This is one of the reasons the Eldar are so leery about allowing access to the Webway, they know how to make new gates into the Webway (and even that takes time) and patch minor holes, but they don't know how to make a new one if the whole thing is broken. It's the equivalent of a mechanic who knows how to change a tire or fix an engine, but can't manufacture a car from scratch. The Webway is alive and is capable of mitigating the damage, but even it can only do so much. Indeed, high end Old One technology (such as Tzeentch, Malal, Nurgle, Khorne, the Webway, the Blackstone Fortresses, and the Tuchulcha and other Webway making equipment on Caliban) all seem to exhibit certain hallmarks. Manipulate the Immaterium to a degree people didn't know possible? Check. Use raw warp power? Check. Not made of adamantium, wraithbone, or any other known materials? Check. Alive? Check. You could even make the argument that the eldar and the other uplifted soldier races fit these criteria.

Hilariously, the Webway only ever seems to target Necrons using Dolmen Gates (even in vanilla), at least directly, it still tries to mess with the heads of anyone who tries to use it. This suggests that the Old Ones only told the Webway to keep out Necrons, Chaos not being a thing during the War in Heaven. So the Crones who are balls-deep in Chaos can go running through the Webway, and the Webway only ever seems to note "huh, those Eldar have a serious radiation exposure problem. They should probably have that looked at".

== Necrons of the Star Empire ==

=== Imotekh the Stormlord ===

Because many of the Necrons have developed their own quirks from the long sleep, the Silent King often finds it most useful to give his subjects generalized orders (like "go kill that planet") and let his generals go about their own way to do it. Imotekh is a great example of this.

Imotekh is the classic example of a “bad guy” who nevertheless has a strict code of ethics and some traits that even his worst enemies would begrudgingly consider virtues. Imotekh has a measure of honor, unusual for a Necron, and when told to destroy a planet his fleet will often show up in full force around the planet, blowing any element of surprise, as Imotekh demands that the planet nominate a champion to fight him in one-on-one combat to determine its fate. Firing upon Imotekh is considered a forfeture of the duel and planets who do so are annihilated.

If the champion wins, the planet is spared (i.e., Imotekh goes back to Silent King and goes "sorry boss, planet is too stronk”). If the champion of the planet is defeated, the Necrons open fire and kill every man, woman, and child on the planet. Imotekh doesn't blink an eye. After all, they lost, fair and square. Imotekh rarely loses, if for nothing else than it’s rather hard for an average planet to produce an individual that can win against a Terminator-esque skele-bot.

=== Anrakyr the Traveller ===

Anrakyr the Traveller is going around waking up all the still slumbering Tomb Worlds at the Silent King's behest, so that the entire Star Empire will be ready to go when the Silent King gives the order. He's perfectly friendly and willing to chat with the locals while doing so, because the locals aren't part of his orders, unless he thinks they're getting in the way of him doing his job. Indeed, a lot of the nicer servants of the Silent King such as Anrakyr and Imotekh seem to be this way. They'll act perfectly friendly to you because they want to and they have received no orders that supercede this, but their orders always come first and the minute they think you're keeping them from completing their orders (or they actually are ordered to kill you) they bust out the gauss weaponry.

=== Trazyn the Infinite ===

In addition to the underclass present on Solemnace, Trazyn the Infinite often hires mortals to serve as scribes, organizers, and cataloguers of his vast collection. Trazyn's collection is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn about the history and inner workings of the galaxy. The catch is that once you enter Trazyn's employ, you can never leave, as Trazyn doesn't want word of the more dangerous or politically controversial items in his collection getting out.

To continue with the “Necrons = Victorian England, Imperium = 1600’s Europe” analogy that has been used, Trazyn seems kind of like an old British anthropologist (or a xenologist in this case). Instead of being horrified that the galaxy is so different from what he remembers, he's delighted because it means everything is new again and he gets to relearn galactic history and culture all over again. The reason he’s giving the Silent King the two finger salute is he thinks its stupid to exterminate his objects of study for no good reason. At the same time, he’s not siding with the Imperium because “he’s not going to take orders from the bloody primitives”.

===Orikan the Diviner===
Kinda pictured Orikan as a Cain sort of sire for a bunch of Victorian aristocratic vampire Strigoi, and the pyramid motifs fit well. I'm picturing Crowley-esque vampire space aristocrats on the human side, and a few necrons that Orikan put Deceiver shards in that came out like Archeologists in requiem.

Orikan just being in possession of a significant Deceiver sliver, whether or not its embedded in him, may make him count as a powerful Strigoi. He might have fractal gold creeping through his cold metal bones, he might not, and it could just as well be the lying star god's motif that dictates his actions, or that of the long dead, mad Necrotyr mystic. In any case he has a sliver of The Deceiver in his possession, he has sired Strigoi from it with the apparent intent of expanding his access to The Deceiver's pool of psychic power and shard material for experimentation, and conducts vast and subtle intrigues in both the Imperium and Necron Star Empire. Even if the Diviner is not a vampire in nature, it appears to be in effect, standing as the progenitor and involved master of one of the eldest traceable lines of Strigoi. 

Many of the powerful Vampires are but a few degrees removed from his early experiments millennia ago are now well established sires in their own right, either deeply embedded in or legendary hated by the Imperium or Necrons. Those human sires that have risen to the great progenitor's attention over the centuries might be backed by trifles of Necron technology, and this in turn would give rise to legends of vampire lords wielding macabre wonders even beyond the ken of the eldest of their kind.

Orikan runs his vampire pyramid scheme for magic within his magic pyramid, which itself is also scheming. Orikan has implanted a shard of the Deceiver in his pyramid as his A.I. assistant/security system/reliable traitor. The fragment will try to betray Orikan and take over the operation, even if Orikan is a Deceiver vampire, because it's a fragment of the Deceiver and that's just how the Deceiver does things. If Orikan loses against the pyramid, then obviously he wasn't very good at his job (or he just uses his bullshit time travel/divination, which also works). But because the fragment want it to be the one to betray Orikan, it does a fantastic job at keeping out the riffraff. The pyramid itself is basically Nagash’s Black Pyramid or the pyramid of one of the Archaeologists from Requiem Vampire Knight with a giant Illuminati-style eye (which is probably a telescope used for Orikan’s divining, but don’t let that disappoint you).

== Technology ==

=== Inertialess Drives ===

They're back, the Necrons have them. However, inertialess drives are only found on the very large, capital ships. For example Nemesor Zandrekh, the Imperium's closest contact among the Necrons, has a grand total of one ship with an inertialess drive. Every other Necron ship has to hitch a ride on one of the capital ships or use the Dolmen Gates.

The Inertialess Drives were the cause of the First Wars of Secession, which were fought long before Szarekh's time. Although Necrontyr society placed a high value on loyalty and obedience, this value wasn't necessarily in abundance. The Necrontyr premium on loyalty was in part because you had a lot of rules-lawyering Starscreams plotting in the courts and actual loyalty, like the kind you see between Obyron and Zahndrekh, was highly treasured. Positive feedback loop. Because there was little to no contact with the throneworld, the Phaerons of the various colonies were all able to say they were ruling in the Silent King’s name when they were really just consolidating their own power base.

Even after leaving their homeworld, the Necrontyr had short lives, on par with the Tau, because the radiation of the star had been so bad that the entire species' genetic code was riddled with mutations and damaged genes and the species as a whole had been selected for growing up fast and reproducing fast before the cancer got you. The Necrontyr did have some form of life-extending drugs, but the nobility mostly extended their lives through stasis chambers, telescoping but watering down their natural lives, being defrosted mostly when it was decision making time. These stasis chambers looked like ancient Egyptian Sarcophagi because these were the Necrontyr and of course they would. This coupled with a tradition of inheriting names was used to convince the ignorant masses that they were a superior breed of Necrontyr more worthy to rule.

So when representatives of the actual Silent King showed up with shiny new inertialess drives, all of a sudden the orders they’re receiving from the throneworld are different from their actual desires. So they say "fuck that" and rebel.

=== World Engines ===

The attack on the World Engine happened much as in canon, what with the Astral Knights ramming their Battle Barge into the thing, with a few notable differences. First, in addition to the Astral Knights, a number of Eldar joined in on the ramming of the World Engine, because they weren't going to let a bunch of Space Marines show them up especially against their most hated enemy. Secondly, rather than M41, in this timeline the World Engine attack happened in M34. There are several reasons for this. First, there a severe lack of events between M32 and the Age of Apostasy. Secondly, if the World Engine occurred at the same time as canon, depending on the time the Emperor would either ask the Silent King what the fuck is going on or merely consider it an escalation of hostilities. Moving the World Engine up to M34 increases its “OH GOD WHAT” factor and really foreshadows what the Imperium is in for with the Necrons.

Consider the following. In M34 the Imperium is at the peak of their power. The mortal followers of Chaos have been forced back into the Eye of Terror, the Orks are disorganized, and there are no tyranids, Necron Star Empire, or major uprisings to divert forces from other fronts. The Imperium is basically on top of things.
And then this World Engine from what is supposed to be an extinct race comes lumbering in from out of nowhere carving a swathe of destruction through the Imperium. No one knows where it came from. No one knows where it was going. All that anyone knows is that it shrugged off nearly everything the Imperium could throw at it, and its point defenses shot down just about everyone who tried to stop it about as easily as a human swatting a fly. The Imperium finally put it down at great cost, but a lot of uncertainty remained as to what this thing was, where it came from, and if something like this was going to happen again.

It's the equivalent of if a nuclear missile came blazing through the sky one day only to be shot down at great cost, and later analysis of the design shows it was built by an extinct civilization. How did they build it? How did it get launched? Are there more of them?

Fast forward to M41, and it turns out the mystery object was a Necron world engine. <b><i>A</i></b> Necron World Engine. As in they have multiples of the thing. Not a lot mind you, probably no more than a handful, because building a World Engine is still a massive undertaking even for the Necrons. The M34 World Engine was reactivated by accident, rather than on purpose. As of 999.M41 the remaining World Engines have only just finished booting up after having been reactivated by the Silent King as he gets the big guns out.

World Engine also means when the Silent King revs the rest of them up in M41, the Imperium has enough context to know how hard to shit bricks. To the average Imperial, the World Engine had almost reached mythological status , and now you're saying there's more of them? It would be like telling the ancient Greeks that Tartarus was open and Kronos was back.

=== Destroyers ===

Because the Necron Star Empire works differently here than in canon ([[1984|THERE IS NO UNHAPPINESS IN THE REALM OF THE SILENT KING]] - Szarekh) the [[Necron_Destroyer|Destroyers]] aren't a bunch of omnicidal nihlists in this timeline (with the exception of independent dynasties out of the Silent King's control, in which they very well may be). Instead, the Destroyers are a good illustration of just how worthless individuality and the wants and needs of the individual are to the post-everything Necron Star Empire. Just about the only thing the average Necron pleb has left is their body image. They threw away their honor. They sold their souls. They sacrificed their freedom of thought. All they have left is their physical form, and even that has been turned to metal, but at least it's theirs. But fuck that, because the Silent King has just decreed that he needs heavy infantry and he needs it now. And the Necron plebs do it immediately and without hesitation, eager to fulfill the will of the Silent King and his lords.

== General Timeline of the Life of the Silent King ==

Silent King Atenakhen (or just Akhen if that’s too on the nose) is assassinated by his fellow triarchs. Szarekh is about the Necrontyr equivalent of ten at the time. Szarekh promptly put on the throne. Everyone assumes that Szarekh will be a pushover who’s easy to manipulate because he’s a kid and he’s young and impressionable.

Necrontyr colonies hear of the news and go “holy shit, every Necrontyr for themselves” and kick off the Second Wars of Succession, aided by the fact that the colony worlds never really liked the fact that they had to listen to those idiots on the homeworld in the first place.

Fast forward a few years. Szarekh is now the Necrontyr equivalent of twenty-one and it’s clear that he’s nobody’s tool. Between his natural charisma and ability to politically outmaneuver people he is able to gain power and make it clear exactly who is in charge. The defining moment of this was when he tried his fellow Triarchs for conspiracy in murdering his father and sentenced them to death by exposure to Aza’gorod.

Now that the homeworld has been sufficiently cock-slapped into submission and Szarekh has replaced the Triarch with members he know won’t stab him in the back it’s time for the rest of the empire. The homeworld always has the largest supply of inertialess drive ships, which made it child’s play to re-establish the Silent King’s rule. Between the inertialess drives and the stasis chambers Szarekh is about the Necrontyr equivalent of thirty by the time that it’s all done.

A few years of peace. Necrontyr technology advances slightly and life is relatively good despite the cancer. If this is how the rest of his reign was going to be Szarekh would have been happy.

Unfortunately, this is about the time when things start breaking down on the Old One front. Nobody’s really clear what happened. The Necrontyr say the Old Ones are a bunch of delusional maniacs who play God with the rest of the universe. The Old Ones say the Necrontyr are a bunch of greedy upstarts who want everything but know nothing. War is declared.

Bad move. Regardless of who has the moral high ground in this situation the Old Ones are still on a level of technology the Necrontyr are only barely able to grasp. The half-material, half-immaterial lizard wizards beat the Necrontyr back to their core territories within a year (few years?), almost as a statement more than anything else. The Necrontyr have inertialess drives but that doesn’t matter much when only the biggest ships have them and the Old Ones can just walk from planet to planet.

Silent King is sitting in his chambers on the homeworld wondering if he’s going to be the person who signed the death warrant of the Necrontyr when a Cryptek comes in. They were performing studies on Aza’gorod and it turns out there’s something living in the sun. Something that’s giving off more power than the Old Ones, and could possibly be communicated with and drawn into a Necrodermis body to act as a weapon against them.

Silent King says do it. Then find every other star that shows a similar signature and to it to them as well. Despite first contact with the Nightbringer goes horribly, before long Silent King has a small army of star monstrosities. Name them after the old half-forgotten Necrontyr pantheon, because what else are you going to call them?

Tide of the war starts to turn. Mag’ladroth, despite being named after the Necrontyr god of oblivion, turns out to be a huge nerd and helps advance Necrontyr technology. Builds dampening devices to force Old Ones to fight on Necrontyr terms. Nyadra’zatha shows the Necrontyr how to strike at the Old Ones on their own turf. Old Ones start dying.

Old Ones get desperate. Start uplifting races with features they think will make good soldiers. Aeldari, Hrud, K'nib, and so on. It’s a bloodbath. Mephet’ran comes to Silent King and says Mag’ladroth has an idea that will not only give the Necrontyr the power to win over the Necrons, but will make them immortal as well. Silent King accepts, not only for the benefit of the Star Empire but possibly because he also has a cancer in his stomach.

Biotransference happens. Silent King goes through it and realizes it was not worth it. But the C’tan-Necron alliance is winning. C’tan give Szarekh control over the Necrons second only to them in a sick parody of gratitude. War gets really crazy as the real reality-destroying superweapons start getting thrown around. The Old Ones unleash their greatest atrocities, Khorne and the Gorkamorka/Krork, upon the galaxy. Mag'ladroth and Vaul have their little scrap. Khaine kicks Nightbringer in the Necrodermis and chucks his Scythe (whatever that is) into the Warp. Mag’ladroth gets pissy about something and goes to confront his brethren while they’re in some [[Solar System|third-rate Old One genestock system]]. Never comes back.

Szarekh starts plotting revenge against the C’tan. First try: destroy Llandu’gor the Flayer with experimental weaponry. Despite working, is highly dangerous, almost breaks reality, and results in the Flayer curse. Need backup plan. Second try: convince C’tan to kill each other. Old Ones almost extinct at this point and the question starts becoming who gets the galaxy afterwards. Szarekh pushes Outsider to kill other C’tan. Unbeknownst to him Cegorach and Deceiver are doing the same for Nightbringer and the other C’tan.

Ends in a bloodbath with only Outsider, Deceiver, and Nightbringer standing. Outsider grows a conscience and multiple personality disorder from siblings screaming in his head and runs off crying. Deceiver and Nightbringer too out of it to notice when Szarekh gives the order to fire. Weaponry used was horribly destructive and reality-violating, but causes less collateral damage than whatever it was that killed Llandu’gor. Downside is shards have to be vacuumed up and kept in Tesseract labyrinths because they’re still active.

Now what. Galaxy is an uninhabitable shithole. Enslavers everywhere. No way to restore empire or reverse biotransference. No clue what happened to Old Ones’ toy soldiers. Orikan comes to Szarekh with an idea. He sees that sixty six million years in the future the galaxy will be at a point where the Old One slave races and whatever other species that have arisen since that time will be at an all-time ebb. If the Empire hibernates and wakes up at that point in time, they can steamroll the galaxy and reassert the dominance of the Star Empire.

Silent King decides to do it. Misses the alarm by five thousand years (oh come on, it was literally a .000075% error). And the rest, they say, is history.

== How Szarekh Killed the Flayer and the Drazak Dynasty ==

Szarekh most likely killed the Flayer by tweaking the universal constants of reality in a localized area (possibly the Breath of Gods? Who knows). The C'tan all seem to be tied to the fundamental laws of nature in the Materium in this timeline. Tweak the universal constants (such that, say, gravity or the electromagnetic force doesn't exist) and the C'tan ceases to exist (how can an energy being exist in a localized pocket where the laws of physics say energy cannot exist?) The problem is doing so requires a lot of energy to contain and if you're not careful is self-perpetuating as reality adjusts to its new constraints. The backlash could impose the altered constants on the entire Materium, and all of a sudden you get something like atoms no longer stick together and all you're left with is proton dust. 

This is the reason why although Szarekh was willing to do almost anything to win the War in Heaven, he considered the methods used to kill the Flayer to be crossing a line (which is saying a lot). Szarekh wants to rule. You can’t rule if you and everyone else are a bunch of subatomic dust. Hence deleting the knowledge from the Necrons’ memories, so no one can ever do something this stupid again or potentially use it against the Necrons (but keeping the knowledge himself, just in case). And then going with the marginally less risky plan of breaking the C’tan into shards and putting them in Tesseract Vaults for all eternity. The only one who suspects what really happened is Trazyn, and that's more because he’s noticed the parts of his memory that have been tampered with and figured it out from there than what really happened.

In this timeline Trazyn ordered Valgul and the Drazak Dynasty to destroy the Flayer rather than Xun’bakyr, given Xun’bakyr was a raving C’tan fangirl. Hence why the dynasty is almost 100% Flayed Ones. There hasn’t been a lot on the Drazak, but it’s been suggested like canon Valgul was lucky in being the only Necron of the Drazak Dynasty who is immune to the Flayer Virus (or is possibly a carrier or is able to control his hunger). The only sane man in the land of the mad. Valgul still serves Szarekh dutifully, in part because he still has his mind and in part because this is Szarekh and having absolute loyalty over his subjects due to control protocols is kind of his thing. Nevertheless, he knows the rest of his dynasty are monsters and has no problem with the Silent King using them as disposable meat-shields and sowers of terror. Despite this, most of the Silent King’s Necrons dislike the Flayers with what little self-control they have, and Szarekh himself tries to avoid direct contact between his forces and the flayers because he doesn’t want to infect valuable officers and resources.