Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

== 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".