Army Combat Veteran Reacts to The Necron Dynasties (Templin Institute)

[@wulferikgebhardt5312]

Life evolves towards "just good enough", not towards "optimal".

[@dine19997]

Just like how humans giving birth is very painful while other animals don't have that issue.

[@ShinigamiSamaH]

The fact that animals like the Kiwi or those Kakapo exist pretty much prove it. They are practically a dead-end in evolution, and only survived to this day thank to there are no predators around to bother them.

[@chrissbim3356]

Yup this seems to be a huge misconception that people seem to have about evolution. There's so many animals today with evolutionary traits that serve very little benifit hell even humans have serious flaws.

[@ThomasTee]

Case in point: the vertebrate eye

[@anoninunen]

Crab is optimal

[@xazelnighthaunterfanboy975]

" My People shackled the Stars and broke mortality when the species you sprang from had barely left the slime pools it spawned in ! Our wars burned reality and the dominion of our Kings is without limit, the ground you thread on is not yours, it is ours" Necron Setekh ( from Audio Book Ahriman: Key of Infinity)

[@alexkaplan6581]

"Spare me your condescension human. You speak to a Phaeron of the Infinite Empire. I was conquering the stars while your kind was wallowing in your own filth like witless beasts. Do not dare address me with such lack of respect again. Truce or no, I will see you buried in a lightless tomb with only the scarabs to hear your screams." -Phaeron Thaszar the Invincible of the Sarnekh Dynasty , addressing Lord General Hausmann during the Hadrima Summit

[@nawnomadnan9874]

Badass speech!

[@ammarsalim1185]

I love Necrons Man

[@botindeldiablo]

One tiny mistake: high ranking Necrons got perfect biotransference unlike commoners. Most of them remember the old days and they still fully "themself". Some got damaged over the great slumber or by virus (like the Flayed virus). Also C'tans themself are the power behind abstract concepts in reality: for example the Nightbringer is Death itself and when he was shatter intro fragments the act itself ingrained the fear of death for mortal races in the setting, aside Orks because Gork & Mork as gestalt shield them.

[@ryanong3517]

I think Illuminor Szeras said it *wasn't* perfect, that's why they experiment to undo some of the effects. The madness is supposedly unavoidable over time.

[@ODDnanref]

I thought that the high ranking Necrons got better bodies. Which meant they lasted longer, and this required less uploading and downloading their personalities. Plebs decayed faster because their bodies needed to be replaced faster. Maybe it is a combination of both.

[@ryanong3517]

@@ODDnanref The bosses literally get more drive space in their galaxy wide network (that's how they transition between bodies - unless you smash the relay, their consciousness gets re-uploaded into the network; this is somewhat described in Hammer and Anvil). The lower ranks didn't get as much "room" for their full personality to be uploaded.

[@skebaba918]

"Remember". It's come into doubt how much they ACTUALLY REMEMBER, and how much of the "memories" was just the C'tan fucking w/ them for shits n giggles post-biotransference

[@TmanTheTdog]

@@skebaba918 “I remember when they (Cadian Pylons) were made, or perhaps I don’t? Memory is such a fickle thing.” -Trazyn the Infinite

[@thedistur6edguy189]

3:15 Paul: "They saw the Necrons; realized they were a threat; designed different, less threatening races to counter them..." Me: ( *looks at the Orks* ) "Define *LESS THREATENING* ..."

[@ipatchymakouli415]

Come on Orks aren't threatening... they just want to have some fun ! I know Eldars were designed to use psychic powers to be able to destroy C'tans (using Blackstone fortresses), but I wonder what were the Orks designed for... Maybe to compete with the Necrons regenerative capabilities? So that each created race can deal or at least try to deal with the Necrons on different fronts (armies & C'tans). Just speculation

[@CommissarChaotic]

Wait... can orks be satisfied with just sparring or does bloodshed have to be involved?

[@zackarieneifert7014]

@@ipatchymakouli415 orks were origionally krorks, which were much larger, more intelegent and less bloodthirsty

[@joshuagraham5422]

@@ipatchymakouli415 maybe because orks are unpredictable Necrons are very dogmatic and stubborn and i think i read in a codex that imotekh hates the orks just because of them being unpredictable

[@christophercotto4212]

Because getting shot by the most basic side arm of an ork doesn't instantly atomize you and your tank

[@jacktobias6513]

The Templin Institute REALLY needs to improve their inter-dimensional security, since they have even been hacked by INGSOC at one point.

[@deamonmindgaming2054]

Old alien race wants other species to get off their lawn We got one of the best characters in the series from this faction and all he does collect stuff to preserve it.

[@F14thunderhawk]

Trazyn the Infinite wants to be the Very Best, like no one ever was.

[@joshuagraham5422]

@@F14thunderhawk Gotta catch em all!

[@k96man]

"It belongs to the museum!... *My* museum that is, now gimme"

[@gokbay3057]

Trazyn is the best. There is a text where he talks to an Inquisitor who sent some guard regiments to try and kill him: "Ah, you must be a scholar like myself to notice that my collection of [X Battle] was lacking two guard regiments. Your generous donation of 4 regiments is much appreciated. Here, a tesseract labyrinth (read; cosmic pokeball) as a token of my appreciation. It's a trinket only of interest to scholars like us, if you can escape from it that is." What a lad. One of my favourite Xenos characters (along with a bunch of Orks and that senile Necron, who thinks he is still flesh and thinks the humans he captures are Necrontyr like him, so treats them well as proper PoWs).

[@royhammersmark9636]

The easiest explanation to the Necrontyrs tortured existance is simply that at some point their star changed its radiation output for some reason. And it happened to quickly for evolution to catch up, if even possible.

[@thomaspurol9322]

Ie: the nightbringer got hungry

[@Eathus]

The C'Tan despite their vastness were originally rather benign and didn't really have concepts of interacting with anything beyond mildly munching on space radiation around stars and doing nothing, the Necrontyr just had to fuck that up.

[@iamdream2562]

@@morgothable We don't know, but I think it's much more likely the C'tan didn't really have "technology" or "science" of their own. Sure maybe they had a kind of intrinsic understanding of the Universe, but not technology. I think the most likely option is that the C'tan's vast minds and intrinsic ties to the material universe allowed them to consume/learn Necrontyr science extremely rapidly, and then creatively advance it and invent new technologies and "discover" new knowledge.

[@iamdream2562]

@@morgothable Right but I think it's very likely that C'tan did not already "have" the tech. I mean if they really never interacted much with anything, and just kind of drifted in nebulous clouds and fed on stars, they probably didn't even have a concept of math, let alone technology. I think after being given bodies and new understanding/perspective, their supercomputer intellect, combined with their instinctive understanding of the universe, they probably "invented" their exotic supertech.

[@Heseroth]

It is possible they had a connection to the warp, but it was minimal, same as the Tau, who barely register in the warp. Also the warp was rather calm in that time, having few races to feed the chaos, and fewer psychers to open the way through it. It does not matter either way, since the Warp is anathema to the C'tan it makes sense that the soulles necrons do not register either. In older necron lore the C'tan were actually trying to close off the warp from the materium completely if i remember correctly. As for calculating if stars go supernova or the movement of tectonic plates, when the silent king issued the order to slumber, he used the Necron Command Protocols, which made the command imperative and made other necrons basically unable to disobey, so even if the necrons knew that in 100k years the planet would be destroyed, they wouldnt be able to not go dormant. (he apparently destroyed the command codes after he left, so no one else will have such power over the necrons)

[@Tullaryx]

They've retconned that in that it's not the C'tan but the Necrons who are trying to do that with the use of the Cadian pylons being a prime example.

[@ashardalondragnipurake]

the pilons being around the eye of terror means it wasnt against the warp it was just a weapon against the eldar as the godmaking weapon of the old ones

[@k96man]

Would you compare the connection to the warp as being similar to a Wi-Fi connection? Like sometimes you have a good download speed but not a very good upload speed

[@k96man]

Or maybe a better comparison would be that one episode from Futurama, the one with the giant brains that found brain waves really annoying.

[@lukejones2731]

The audiobook for "The Infinite and the divine " is pretty good if you wanted to check that out instead of waiting. I especially like the voices given to Trazyn and Orikan.

[@mistabrrrly]

It also provides a good explanation of Necron Culture and technology. The Tech is very similar to the MCU’s explanation of Asgardian magic

[@jacktobias6513]

20:33, well the Necrontyr DID have souls, they were eaten by the C'tan when they entered the Biotransference things.

[@hentaihaven8552]

Yes and Furnices

[@tavernburner3066]

They had a weak connection to the warp but a connection none the less.

[@MrHitmancheg]

They mentioned something interesting in this video called the Pariah Nexus. Basically, at some point the Necrons managed to completely cut off an entire region of the galaxy from the warp. It's useful for them, because warp doesn't really do anything good for you when you are a soulless machine that uses webway to travel, but it's incredibly harmful for all sentient life in said region. Any creature affected is struck by despair, lethargy, exhaustion and loses ability to use psyker abilities if they had any. Exposure over long enough periods of time can drive the victims to commit suicide. The Imperium calls this "Stilling".

[@DoctorM42]

C'Tan are "incalculable" because their biggest power comes from changing fundamental physical constants of the world. You cannot really measure a power of locally changing gravitational constant or speed of ligt, because it affects the very measuring system you use.

[@lucius3213]

There is an instance of Tau being affected by the negative warp presence of a Culexus assasin. Logic would presume that a creature without presence in the warp (like Tau and Necrontyr) would be unaffected by this negative presence. So from this I'd say that Tau do have some connection (however minor) to the warp and thus a soul, I'd say the same would be true for the Necrontyr. Also every human has a presence in the warp, however for a human to be a psyker they need a rather segnificant presence.

[@Morrigi192]

This is canonical, at least for the Tau. It's not that they have no presence, it's just small enough to be beneath notice in normal circumstances. Not valuable enough for daemons and gods to fight over.

[@Cainite]

The Necrons slept atleast 60.000.000 years

[@jeanespinasse1829]

Fun fact: the Death Korps of Krieg (ya love to see 'em) actually won a trench war against the Necron, and is generally assumed they would have won the war of attrition, but had to leave the planet because the human citizens feared the Death Korps more than the Necrons and rose against the imperial "invader"

[@sephiroaone-of-nine101]

“I am the destroyer of ancient gods, I am the one who broke the masters, I am she who never Kneeled, A master who shackled the stars and tamed galaxies, you think to challenge me?” - Phaeron High Queen Nefertari (my avatar)

[@thomaspurol9322]

Sounds like a poser of the silent king

[@sephiroaone-of-nine101]

@@thomaspurol9322 why would I want to be like the silent king - lords you know little of necrons if you think that

[@sd501st5]

Oh, Neferata, how did YOU get here? A travel through the realm of the ancient enemy seems... unlikely, even for you. Or are you a distorted mirror image, like most of the galaxy? Ah, it does not really matter anyway. Apparently "end times" are beginning here as well. But... maybe, just maybe, the image will distort enough to enact another outcome. - Unkown

[@ashardalondragnipurake]

just like the fist steam engine, the first railroad was built in the UK, not the US the technology was attempted to keep a secret so the UK would get more advantage out of it vs its competition, but it quickly got out and did so in europe before it did in the US the advantage europe had over the US is that europe is pretty compact, very densely constructed in comparison to the wide open spaces of the US life doesnt optimize, good enough is good enough for evolution look at the giraffe or all the other downright dumb designs in any creature life doesnt optimize until not being optimal starts killing off the less optimal fun fact, now people arnt dying from genetic diseases like diabetes or cleft lip, it has tripled in prevalence if something can reproduce before it dies, no matter how suboptimal it is, it will spread the only evolution the necrons would need in natures eyes would be a short childhood and a very horny early adulthood and their race would continue, and thats just one of the billion options evolution has to be good enough no matter the size of the computer the ability to predict the future depends on the data input all the calculating power in the world wont help if you dont have the ability to correctly witness and provide that data to it the problem with a being of unimaginable power is that it doesnt really have a need to think it can just float around happy eating stars, watching the galaxy burn itself out without caring just like the cthan did until the necrons trapped them in bodies and made them aware of the smaller things they never noticed before like the meatbags with souls far more delicious then the suns it had been eating before and then the deceiver proved how easily it could figure out the concepts of lesser beings with its incomprehensible intelligence its not that a being like that wouldnt be able to understand the concepts of trade lessers had made, its that they wouldnt need to care, they wouldnt have anything to trade but the necrons had souls not having a soul and not having psychic powers are two different things the tau have a soul, but its a very flimsy one so small that it can safely do minor warp jumps without being noticed by demons to use warp, or during the time of the necrons empyrean, tech requires more then just a soul, it requires psychic powers, even just a little every creature has a soul, even pariah's having a negative warp removing soul, is still technically a soul the silent kind didnt have an empire when he left he had only tombs and he would live forever pretty sure that he was planning to get his stuff back once things cooled down and he had had his time to think he just didnt want to risk hibernation like he forced on his people hard to clone a creature that had all of its members burned up 60 million years ago thats a long time for genetic data to last, even if there was any fun fact, the necron warrior wasnt a part of the necron armies before biotransferrence they where the lower class civilians immortals are the lowest rank of necron military that was actually military when they where still necronthyr

[@ryanong3517]

Given that some of those Necron warriors are supposedly children, it's likely the metal bodies were as much life support / life boat as it was war machine.

[@ashardalondragnipurake]

@@ryanong3517 was just standard mass produced, cheap as possible no point trying to make a special size for everyone, only thing that went inside was the bare minimum of programming but they where definitely programmed for war

[@jacktobias6513]

38:13, funny you should mention that, there is one necron guy who thinks that he is still flesh and bone, and takes prisoners of war and such, why does he take prisoners of war you ask? Well he thinks that the other species are people rebelling against the Triarch, and also he has a strong sense of honor. Only his personal bodyguard, his second in command knows about it thinks otherwise, BUT there is proof that is faking it for whatever reason.

[@tonygomez9612]

In the world of 40k, every being has a presence in the warp. Even tyrannids have a presence. The reason the necrons don't have a presence is because their souls were removed from their bodies, and with it their emotions and personalities too. Once they lost their souls their presence vanished from the warp. If a necrons body were to be absolutely destroyed their souls can not enter the warp naturally because they don't have a souls. So right now they are nothing more than robots who follow orders from their necron overlords who regained a portion of their personalities, but not their souls.

[@johnfraire6931]

I think he means the idea that the Necrontyr of old had no presence in the warp, but Idk

[@pappajudas9267]

When you were starting to talk about first-movers the things that came to mind were French smokeless powder rifles and Blackberry smart phones.

[@Archnor]

A prime example of Necron terror tactics are "The Flayed Ones" these are Necrons that that have succumbed to a computer virus that turns them to a level of deranged murderous insanity. After attacking an organic target (Humans, Orks, Aeldari, Tau etc) they will strip the skin from their victims, and wear it into battle. The psychological effect would be immense and devastating. Kinda reminds me of the Aztecs.

[@Notbatman374]

the reason they go insane, is hunger. the virus makes them feel the need to consume flesh, despite not having the ability. the flayed will jam gore into the slit of their robotic skull where a mouth is supposed to be. the result is a robot full of rotting meat, dripping with rot, wearing the skins of its enemies. good things nekrons can't smell.

[@akiva2112]

Trazyn at the end was still the best

[@TheDCEntertainment]

the necrons would have an easy time understanding the blood ravens chapter, they would just give them a short glance and be like: "hmm, the human equivalent to our trazyn"

[@bruvamichal7437]

Back in war in heaven warp used to be calmer. You would see much more basic warp entities like Enslavers

[@gokbay3057]

"Railroads first developed in US" No, Railroads first developed in the UK. Also Russia did not use standard gauge even during the WW2 (not sure when if ever they switched to standard) (Edit: No they never did switch to standard).

[@CombatVeteranReacts]

Yea, another commenter pointed out that I got it wrong. Both the US and europe went through growing pains in trying to set railroad gauge, with different companies using proprietary gauges before an international standard was set. As you pointed out, The USSR and Eastern bloc countries used their own gauge in the colder war.

[@concretesandals4501]

I think that you would enjoy Oculus Imperia's Tactics and Structure series, where he breaks down the formations and combat doctrines of various Space Marine legions. The Alpha Legion video may be the best.

[@phalanxwarden4124]

Have dropped several hints over the past weeks to react to some oculus. Want him to go deep and react to the history of the Unification wars Or at least the custodes, assassins or blood angels( i know he done the Templin institute but he got the totally wrong idea about the 9th.)

[@goliath1179]

Honestly, I like the TTS version of the Ctan in which before they were machine gods, they were just semi-sentient fart clouds. Now that has to be an achievement in which you can talk to a radioactive space fart.

[@coldrage20t8]

Ctan break the math of even the necrons. Because well ctan are gods, new book goes into it but there are a few different gods in warhammer and Ctan are gods that can bend the laws of our dimension to there will. They didnt realise tho that being given true bodies would make them weak to threats of normal brings

[@thetalantonx]

5:15 - *Most* human societies honor their dead, especially societies with short lifespans and high child mortality. Your parents survived long enough to get you here, their parents them, and so on the Ancestors end up worshiped.

[@Brutalyte616]

The Templin Institute grossly overstated the size of the Necrontyr Empire. They were not a galactic-level civilization, although they were incredibly advanced by our standards, and would have been comparable to the current Tau Empire in terms of technological development and size before encountering the Old Ones. 'But then why are there Tomb Worlds all over the galaxy? How could they not cure their condition with all this miraculous technology?' Well that should be obvious; they didn't have it yet. After their initial conflict with the Old Ones, the entire Necrontyr race was confined to their home system, where the Necrontyr discovered the Ctan and made contact with them, and the Star Gods turned the Necrontyr into the Necrons. With the technological surge that came from these immortal bodies and the reality-warping powers of the Ctan, the Necrons were able to travel the stars again and force their way into the Webway tunnels the Old Ones created via the use of so-called Dolmen Gates, unstable breaching devices that often caused the collapse of the surrounding tunnel not long after, allowing them to quickly spread across the galaxy and fight the Old Ones on thousands of worlds. At the conclusion of the War In Heaven and the overthrow of the Ctan, the Silent King ordered that the Necrons go into hiding and sleep for the next 65 million years until the galaxy grew fat and lazy, and so they did, waiting for the Krork and Aeldari to become complacent and weak so the Necrons could reawaken in their Tomb Worlds all across the galaxy and conquer it once and for all. And before you ask, the Eldar inherited a lot of their tech from the Old Ones, including the Webway technology, meaning the Eldar have even less to brag about.

[@Orannis01]

Its stated in the Necron Codex that their empire spanned the entire Galaxy, and there are Billions of Warriors on worlds across their Empire that still havent awoken yet. If you look at the maps at the size of the areas controlled by the Dynasties that are currently awake you can see a large portion of the galaxy was claimed by the Necrons pre-great hibernation. And should they all be awoken, which the Silent King and others are trying to do then the galaxy will be theirs again.

[@Brutalyte616]

@@Orannis01 You overlooked the part where I said the _Necrontyr_ Empire wasn't galactic. They did not possess FTL technology during their time among the living, so it would have taken them millions of years to achieve that level of colonization, and the Old Ones would have encountered them LONG before then. And they did. The _Necron_ Empire, however, did span the galaxy, but that was mostly to facilitate taking the fight to the Old Ones during the War In Heaven, and even after their technical victory in the War In Heaven the Necron Empire wasn't really consolidated in the truest sense because the Silent King had the Necrons go into stasis almost immediately afterwards.

[@cabal_2]

The bit at the end is just Trayzn saying hello

[@nikitaostroukhov6727]

In terms of actual battle tactics. "Hit and run" is a real understatement to their attacks. You see, those boney boys have teleportation abilities on each single warrior. That means when a squad of necrons encounters heavy fire or even the slightest risk of losing a single unit, they can individually teleport back to be patched up by the cryptek nanobots-scarabs. If I recall correctly, in the Dead Men Walking book about the Krieg they encounter a tomb world and had to throw firing lines of 100 and more guardsmen in actual rows to buy several hours. And when a necron warrior felt a tingling heat of lasgans or, god forbid, had a necrodermis wound/puncture, those warriors would be teleported back to salvage the materials or healed back up in a matter of hours to fight again. The amount of losses that are mitigated on a scale of a single army are bonkers, which makes it extremely hard to fight fairly. That's why the destruction of necron tombs seems like "the best" idea.

[@CombatVeteranReacts]

That is how you keep in the fight!

[@SykeowarriorPK]

The basic necron soldier is basically the same as a servitor. No free will or sense of self, but still able to perform tasks and make basic decisions.

[@pappajudas9267]

Different races Souls have a different level of presence in the warp. The more psychically active a race or an individual the brighter the soul in the warp. As far as we know the T'au have no psychic ability but they do have souls. T'au FTL travel is warp based but they don't fully enter the warp. T'au ships use the warp Like a Rock skipping across the surface of a pond or a buoyant object forced below the surface of the water and then released.

[@harz632]

The Warp was calm during those times, chaos was born later. If I'm not mistaken Nurgle, Khorne and Tzeentch were all created by Humanity. Slaanesh is the youngest of the four being born from the Eldar only about 10000 years ago.

[@cyberash3000]

when they say no sign in the warp even the tau have a tin ytinmy insignificant spark, the necrons did too but it was so ssmall it really didnt matter, tis basically like having none

[@BlueGrimgrin]

You bring up Gage, and the start of neuroscience. The interesting thing I recall learning in neuropsychology class was that what really kicked off the science was WW2. Because that was the first time you had a huge population of young, otherwise healthy, (and documented as such) people getting brain injuries when medicine was advanced enough to keep them alive. By comparing the injuries and the symptoms they could actually develop a functional map of the human brain. So, silver linings and all that.

[@sd501st5]

"Truly, compassion is anathema to progress" - TTS; The Man-Emperor It is honestly sad, almost horrifying, how true this seems.

[@danpitzer765]

In the case of the C'Tan, 'incalculable power' may be applicable. As they are (at least in older editions) the sentient essence of stars. The Necrontyr accidentally met them because an experiment meant to try and tame their home system's star coalesced the energy of the C'Tan enough that communication became possible. Of course, the malevolent star that had tortured them for their entire existence, when brought into enough focus to directly consider individuals wasn't any less malevolent. Technically, ANY star could be tampered with to evoke the C'Tan it is, but *nobody* would do that. The other C'Tan, even if reassembled to their full power, don't want the competition. The Necrontyr sure as hell don't want more C'Tan out there. The Chaos Gods REALLY don't want that, as the C'Tan and Chaos Gods are (other than malevolence) nearly opposites, and huge threats to each other.

[@Dinga15]

when he started talking bout a large enough super computer or brain processing information to predict the future i just think of orikan who was predicting the future and warned the silent king of the dangers of siding with the Ctan and other major events in the warhammer universe long before they happened

[@stetonwalters574]

The railroading injury that he's talking about is a guy that got a railroad spike tool shot throw his head

[@cyberash3000]

erm the uk had railways before the usa. we invented trains and railways lol 1725 - The Tanfield Wagonway was constructed to lead coal from pits around Tanfield to the Tyne at Redheugh (Gateshead). It was the first railway built on a large scale - 5 miles of double wooden track with massive civil engineering works including deep cuttings, huge embankments and the world's first large masonry railway bridge, the Causey Arch. Each 2.5 ton capacity waggon (with flanged wooden wheels) was hauled by a horse, up to 60 waggons per hour at peak times. Two miles of the wagonway route are still in use by the Tanfield Railway, making this the oldest operational railway in the world. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_railway_history

[@Docktavion]

I came to say the same thing.

[@zettour.]

"The idea that the Necron Silent King would just dip out . . . is preposterous. It would never happen in human beings. Human beings just love themselves too much to ever do something like that." Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, reigned as Roman dictator twice and resigned voluntarily twice to go back to live a life of an impoverished farmer. Flavius Iustinus Augustus, reigned as the Eastern Roman Emperor and abdicated after becoming aware of his failing mental health. Murad II Kodja, reigned as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and abdicated to retire before returning to deal with a revolt and foreign enemies of the empire. Kristina Augusta, reigned as Queen of Sweden and abdicated in an agreement to receive pension and exemption from arranged marriages as well as to convert to Catholicism (Sweden was a Lutheran country). Ferdinand Karl Leopold Joseph Franz Marcelin, reigned as Emperor of Austria and abdicated to restore public faith in the crown. Tokugawa Yoshinobu, reigned as the shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate and resigned and submitted to the Emperor to prevent a civil war (which he would've won). Omar Ali Saifuddien III, reigned as Sultan of Brunei and abdicated to retire. The idea that people are so fixated on power is built on a flimsy premise. Frankly, the reason authoritarians rise and desperately cling to power is because being a dictator-like figure makes you more likely to gain power. Look at Stalin, Mao, the Kim dynasty, Ho Chi Minh, the list goes on. Those who inherit power or given it by those who wish for them to rule seldom truly want power. That is why so many monarchies fell in times of peace. Truly, the only thing that keeps those rulers by inheritance going is just the dishonor and shame of abdication, like failing generations of your ancestors. Some weren't even ashamed, so was the kings of France throughout the various revolutions.

[@acetraker1988]

Souls and the Warp, The Warp being the Soul Realm. Most living things in the universe have a soul. A comparison that could be made is viewing a soul as a "battery" of potential energy. An the size of the battery varies by race and individual. The stronger a person's presence in the warp the more they are effected by the warp, an the more they can effect the warp. As its highly suggested that the chaos gods mutated humanity to be more warp friendly. As basically human emotions are their food. Races with less presence Necrons/Tau are just beings that have a lower influence in the soul realm. However still had/have souls. The Star Gods, fed on stars, however once Necrons gave them bodies, they gained awareness of a new food source, the Necrons souls. In addition, it was heavily hinted that humanity, the imperium/Mars technology relies of the void dragon, who is devouring the souls of everyone who uses imperial tech. However canon doesn't exist in 40k and their have been rewrites and general inconsistencies anything is possible in 40k.

[@zackarieneifert7014]

on not being able to tell the different dynasties apart, different dynasties have differences in appearance. the central symbol on their chest is dynasty specific, and the classic silver and green is specifically for the sautekh dynasty, which is also the largest currently

[@crapface911]

So weirdly enough, the necrontyr existed before the warp. It was the war in heaven that turned the Realm of Souls into the warp and spawned 3 chaos gods. That's why I think they don't have a strong warp presence.

[@joshbull623]

That is a common misconception. The warp was in turmoil by the end of the war in heaven but the formation of the chaos gods came later. Remember, necrons had no souls, when they died, nothing happened in the warp. The races that fell victim to the C'tan in the war had no impact on the warp because the C'tan feasted on their souls. Krork used what ever the original version of the WAAGH was and didn't directly interact with the warp much, not sure about their souls after death though. The eldar were protected by their weapons>gods and reincarnated thus their souls rarely fed anything in the warp. The C'tan themselves are beings of the materium and have no impact on the warp. Also neither the Necron, C'tan or Old ones and Eldar used the warp for travel too. Leutin explains it better but that is the gist of it.

[@darkydrone]

You should check out "Are The NECRONS Too OVERPOWERED?" from Generation Films

[@Northbravo]

The Silent King stayed awake for the millions of years he was in the space between galaxies. He only came back because he noticed the tyranids closing in on the milky way and decided they were the biggest threat outside the galaxy and decided to lead his people once again.

[@lordomacron3719]

One point about the FTL communication. Before the days of the telegraph there were vast empires on this one planet Earth that dealt with message travel time being weeks or even months and the empires functioned(mostly). As long as there was well established ‘trade routes’ within the Nercrontir empire there would have been a more than viable communication network as well. Yes the ‘lag time’ may have been very long for a single two way message it still would be viable for administration.

[@Orannis01]

Imagine the Soul in 40k to be tangible. Even the Tau have souls, although their presence is the Warp is barely noticeable. The Necrontyr were probably similar. Also the Warp was a much nicer place 65 million years ago, before the War in the Heaven created the first Chaos Gods through the sheer scale of pain and misery spread across the galaxy.

[@hastur-thekinginyellow8115]

You're spot on about the Old Ones. Many the races we see in the Milky Way in the 41st Millennium were actually developed by the Old Ones to fight the Necrontyr (Necron precursors). Some even claim that humanity is a product of Old One science, but... that's just heretical nonsense, right? As for how the Necrontyr civilization developed... I think their civilization simply took on a similar view of death as say, the ancient Egyptians did, where they developed a veneration and fascination for death as an integral part of the life cycle that all were beholden to. That wouldn't stop many ancient Egyptians (and Necrons) however from attempting to search for a way to postpone if not completely defy the same death their civilization's religion developed around. The Egyptian Book of the Dead (which we translated in modern day thanks to the help of the Rosetta Stone) can no be read in English for free online, and I think it's an enlightening read on how a nation could become so fascinated with the concept of death. That being said, that's not to say the Necrontyr didn't actually have some major problems. The star they evolved under had some uh... let's say issues and it wasn't a healthy star like ours. To make matters worse, the planet they evolved on had environmental issues that forced the Necrontyr to receive a daily dose of intense radiation instead of the more healthy proteins and vitamins we receive from the sun thanks to our planets protective atmosphere. As we know from our own world (deepest depths of the Mariana Trench and inside the Sahara Desert come to mind), life can develop in even the most unthinkable and inhospitable places).

[@coldrage20t8]

Big theory with humans having blanks is we are actually a ctan experiment.

[@zacharym7000]

The 'self' is just a product of the brain. 'You' are only ever an observer to the processes of your body. You are a collection of memories, events, and data influenced by the tools through which you perceive e the world

[@lordmcdeath01]

Its because of Cancers. That is hard to just replace.

[@DoctorM42]

Plot twist about the blighted sun of Necron homeworld - it became blighted when Necron already evolved to sapience... because C'Tan was eating it.

[@TheAdamDarvas]

According to the lore, Necro starships have the most advanced stealth tech that only Eldar can penetrate reliably.

[@dillonshafer3895]

Here I am, brain the size of a planet and I’m asked to take you up to the bridge, call that job satisfaction because I don’t

[@gokbay3057]

The Necrontyr and the Tau share having little to no warp connection. The thing is. They do have souls. But while an Eldar soul is a huge bonfire, a psykic human soul is a small camp fire, a normal (non-psyker) human soul is a candle; a Tau or Necrontyr soul is something along the lines of a match.

[@CombatVeteranReacts]

Ah interesting!

[@Notbatman374]

partly true. the necrons have 0 souls. even the overlords who retained a portion of personality don't actually have "souls" just a fragment of their personality encoded into machines database. their souls were consumed by the ctan during biotransferrance. if a regular human is a candle, the whole of the necron race is the tip of a single fiber optic strand.

[@gokbay3057]

Not like the Silent King would rule anything if he stayed since he ordered his people to sleep. Also rulers have abdicated irl so to say that it "would never happen with human beings" is too much. Also also, Assad relinquishing power might be the moral thing to do but at this current point why would he leave power? He is winning.

[@CombatVeteranReacts]

Rulers have for sure, but not authoritarian types who stay in power by force

[@aegisrevr7254]

7:30 One would say so, however with the necronteer being unable to access the warp and thus ftl communications, their communication methods were limited to sub ftl transmissions. This lead to an overal coordination and obedience problem as one might expect

[@ericasandberg7286]

To answer the question at around 22:05 on the subject of souls. Yes the Necrontyrs had souls, they just never evolved any psychic powers. For example: Humans have souls but not all of us are psychic.

[@xenicmark]

I remember reading a book where they proposed an interesting concept. You don't really have to know everything. If you can with a 100% certainty predict where 1 atom will be, you can predict everything by extrapolating. (Im obviously over simplifying but it was an interesting concept)

[@xavier84623]

18:50 you made great points. They sort of explain for that, the necros more worshipped the star gods from afar, while the star gods were mostly unaware and concerned with eating stars, but then when they transferred that giant energy being into necrodermus, creating the c’tan, they were crushing and simplified and perverting something they didn’t understand. What came out were not the same as the old star gods, forcing them into an unnatural smaller simpler forms destroyed the vast alien consciousness they once were and made them into monsters.

[@xavier84623]

Like imagine if we tried to download someone’s brain by taking it apart piece by piece and recording each neuron, but the tech isn’t quite there it’s just a little better than todays tech, and when they hit the on switch it clearly isn’t the person back alive, clearly they have died and this program is them, just another chat bot, maybe the best one yet, but clearly not actually conscious. And then like every other chat bot that gets unleashed online it becomes racist lol. That’s pretty much what happened to the ctan, just one scale up, instead of human consciousness to little/no consciousness, they went from super sized consciousness to basic human sized, and lost a lot in the process.

[@Tullaryx]

I think the Necrontyr had no choice but for their civilization to develop in such a morbid way since by this time warp-travel wasn't a concept for any of the races. If it had been then I'm sure the Necrontyr would've explored far beyond their toxic system to find a more suitable region to colonize. Even the Old Ones who the Necrontyr waged war against didn't use the warp for FTL travel but created the Webway system for FTL travel. The Necrontyr as a race had a presence in the warp, but the warp at that time hadn't been corrupted to the point the way it is now. There were no Chaos entities, Chaos gods, etc. The warp only started to change for the worst when the Old Ones began making more psychically-strong new races like the Eldar to help fight against the Necrons and the C'tan.

[@Heseroth]

Even in the dark age of technology times the warp was pretty calm, untill the bdsm sex ravers ruined it for everyone

[@Tullaryx]

@@Heseroth Actually, if we're gong by the current lore, the Aeldari and Drukhari only really gave birth to the Chaos God Slaanesh. Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle all coalesced during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages of Earth's past. Ane xample being Doombreed, one's of Khorne's first servants was a human warlord during the Middle Ages who ended up pleasing Khorne and ended up becoming a Daemon Prince of Khorne. So, if current 40k lore is to be understood then Three of the Chaos Gods came to being due to humans during the Dark and Middle Ages. Take that you pointy-eared xenos. Humanity better at creating gods.

[@mistabrrrly]

I know he said that when the paperback version of the Infinite and the Divine comes out he’s read it but the Audible version is so good! The narrator does such a good job that it’s probably the main reason i got Audible

[@TheGreatDayne1983]

You can have a soul but still barely touch the warp. A candle will never match a spotlight but it’s can still be seen in the dark.

[@mathewkelly9968]

The necrontyr and necrons are the most human like in their motivations of all xenos.

[@salvadorespinoza7787]

Listen to the audio book of the infinite and the divine, the narrations is great and the voice and accents the narrator does really incapsulates how the necrons sound. Which isnt british sounding but actually egyptian

[@liamhogan4369]

Feudal Europe made it very hard to conduct plodding campaigns because the core of the army was levees, which could only fight for a limited time. Professional armies were rare and limited in numbers. On the other hand, defensive fortifications of the time made lightning campaigns extremely difficult. Therefore, hit and run tactics featured strongly.

[@Northbravo]

The C'tan were so powerful as to flick a finger and likely blow away a planet or solar system

[@inquisitorthomasdefinitely536]

Hell they could blink and you would find yourself on the other side of the galaxy

[@fubar9629]

26:10 well the necrons do have the Celestial Orrery. a star chart that shows the galaxy in real time. It is also capable of causing a star to go super nove before its time. So i would say they are capable of "figuring out which stars are going to go supernova"

[@codyraugh6599]

The stars and tetonic shifting bit is because the Warp and weapons of the other races impacting worlds and stars in ways the Necron did not predict. But Necrons even have their fortresses in pocket dimensions so tetonic shifting and stars going super-nova shouldn't inpact them and there's a bigger reason everything failed and it's wear and tear of this delicate high end machines over time.

[@Kestas_X]

36:20 I think that's in general an aeeumption hastily made by humans: "Evil is controlling everything bad that happens"

[@Mugthraka]

4:20 Egyptians Ancient Egyptians where more preocupied with their After lives, than their actual lives... Necrontyrs are basicaly Space Egyptians,a nd Necrons are Space Egyptians Skeletons

[@randomname3109]

do i hear tomb kings?

[@DoctorM42]

Zones of silenced Warp are geninuey scary. They dampen emotions of humans to the point humans are reduced to apathetic zombies, losing all motivation to do anything. Imperial expedition into empty zones rarely return, but only few of them encounter Necron fleets - most other just stop functioning and starve to death while their ships break around them without maintenance.

[@MrPapamaci88]

The soldier is the greatest advocate of peace. Such a balanced view on the Cold War shows this. Good to see!

[@raze667]

26:00 It's not that they couldn't. They didn't. The bases that existed weren't built with the concept of millions of years in mind. The order to sleep came down, and they didn't just suddenly go out and create bunkers to weather in. They went into their existing strongholds and slept.

[@isaquemaldrylnesouzar-laen5642]

Incauculable power in 40k are the beyond the level of Planet-Star level,close to galatic level.

[@thekraken2419]

*minor spoiler for infinite and divine* A not on “just wait till they hear about cloning” to the fact that they are looking for races to get their flesh bodies back. The plot of the book is that there is an ancient necron treasure vault where the prize is an intact necrontyr body. The C’atan were so ruthless in their rule that they destroyed all of the iconography and bodies of the flesh necrontyr, as well as deleting all memories the necron had of the form their old bodies.

[@wilmagregg3131]

the best way to explain the ctan is there nickname STAR VAMPIRES they are basically giant entities of living energy and plasma that feed on stars by enveloping them and normally dont even comphrend things like planets but the necrontyr in giving them bodies let them percive lower life and all the pleasures that came with it they had absolute power of physics like lovecraftian entities but as parts of the materil universe had no power over the warp and vice versa

[@SykeowarriorPK]

I mean the silent king dipping out wasn’t him giving up power, he was still in charge of everything he just basically went on vacation.

[@danpitzer765]

Regarding souls and the warp - The more psychic potential something has, the more the soul has warp presence. To the chaos gods, stronger warp presence makes better meals. To the C'Tan, such things don't matter. So a race with no psychic potential at all would have almost no warp presence, almost certainly overlooked by all the Daemons. Humans have minor potential in general, with some having HUGE potential making them stand out like beacons. The Tau, only the Ethereals have any psychic power, but are connected to all the other Tau around them, causing the race as a whole to have minor presences. Orks presence increases as more orks gather. Craftworld and Croneworld Eldar have warp presence rivalling Daemons. Dark Eldar have very little warp presence because they've deliberately excised or atrophied their psychic capability...but due to 'special circumstances' their souls stand out like howling beacons to Slaneeshi Daemons. Tyranids warp presence is...disruptive.

[@ryanong3517]

I think it's worth remembering that the Silent King needed an excuse to start a war, and unite the dynasties. Given that his people wrote the history, if's likely they embellished how bad their situation was to justify a war. It wouldn't be too different from what we do, when we want to make a villain of another society. This would have been especially necessary, because the Necrons were the aggressors. Necron technological development has always been unusual, and could have been more focused on machines than biology; that would explain why they never developed psychic powers, and still don't fully grasp biotransference. But their equipment and architecture can last for eons. They may have had a similar attitude to the Mechanicus, already trying to "evolve" to a machine-like stare when they met the C'tan.

[@gyver8448]

When you point out how you think it's weird tat the Necrons and C'Tan were able to come to a consensus because the C'Tan should be able to trick the Necrons so easily, you kind of stumbled upon the entire point there. That's exactly what happened. The C'Tan tricked the Necrons into giving up their bodies and being enslaved. It was basically luck that they were able to fight back.

[@shenren4621]

every living being has a presence in the warp but this varies, the psyker have a presence sufficient to extract the energy from the warp and use it to do "magic", a good example to the problem of the nécrontyr is the race of the tau they do not have access to the warp either but they have a very very slight presence in it

[@nemo0036]

To be fair, If I was in Assad's place (but perhaps with better morals), I believe I wouldn't want to abdicate either. I have a duty I am duty-bound to see through, even to the bitter end. I couldn't live with myself otherwise.

[@Archnor]

Soul and presence in the warp are two different things, the soul is essentially that thing about you that makes you, you. The presence in the warp is defined by the psychic capability, no matter how limited, that a being projected. The Necrontyr were, in essence, a race of Blanks/Pariahs/untouchables. They were anti-psykers, and that was infused in their blackstone technology also called Noctilith. They could employ weapons similar to the Culexus Assassin, against psychic beings, to drive them insane. Hence they are the mortal enemies of the Aeldari, the Aeldari are a race of Psykers, the Necrons can nullify that. The Krorks/Orks are a different matter.

[@rexraptor1940]

There was a comment(not on this channel) asking if you were sent to Warhammer 40k Universe, who would you be? I'd choose Necron Overlord because the Nids avoid us, we have the tech to separate the "Warp" from the materium, and Necron's tech is so advance that the other Races think its Magic. An example that galaxy map that what ever you do in it happens to its counter part in the galaxy, like say we destroy the sun in the Solar System.

[@seanpharo4721]

The issue with things like bio-engineering was the fact that at the time of their conception their star was stable, and it happened at around a modern day standards and by the time they developed that kind of advanced tech their very DNA had holes in it and barely kept itself together using their considerable technologies. The thing about souls and the warp, the soul is like a piece of single data that USED to be able to move back and forth like water in a well maintained and impossibly complex fountain. Then the War in Heaven dropped three bulldozers on this sensitive machine by causing rips in reality itself from super weapons, a huge influx of deaths which made a clogging until it popped. The Necrons had souls yes, but a soul can have different levels of volatility. Human souls are your Standard, able to access the warp but not fully control it as they don’t have any sort of direct connection to it, with the Tau and Necrons having rather staunch souls which were low maintenance and easy to sort itself out, humans kind of chaotic in nature, then elder who are impulse driven, and finally things like full Daemons, which were a microscopic bit of the Warp forced into real space, so they take directly the chaos of the modern warp. Some of this is speculation but this is what I fully believe And there are huge differences between individual souls. The main thing is that things like humans are tied to the warp though tendrils and things like Orks have a defined structure of how they could even USE the warp.

[@joshbull623]

Given their current goal, or at least the Silent King, is to become organic once more, I think it is safe to assume their solution to their longevity problem was not to depend on something that would fundamentally change their lifestyle nor fail in time without future generations being assured such as becoming machine or a clone race.

[@lazywargaming6752]

I think the difference in how the soul effects the warp is because while blanks are born without one and so effect the warp. The necrons souls are stored/used within the c'tan so likely the c'tan can mess around with the warp but the necrons are now just tin cans with legs

[@lazywargaming6752]

Also the psykers like didn't exist in the necrons or were so little in number it didn't matter. The eldar amd ork both are psychic because of old one aid and likely humans have so many because of the bloating of the warp after the war in the heavens.

[@Soulwrite7]

I imagine that around the Necrotyr middle ages, their star when through some kind of change, either expanding or changing the material it was fusing. This change is what then caused them to be maladjusted to its radiation. By the time they were able to space flight, their genetic sequencing was so dysfunctional that traditional reproduction was hard, and their life spans shortened both due to cancer as well as natural selection. With space flight they would have also had to resort to some kind of vat-birth or cloning - though since no good DNA from before their star changed existed, it proved impossible to correct. Eventually natural reproduction outside of vats would be impossible, even if it did happen the product would be sterile. Conceivably with the cancer, mutation, and early deaths, population growth would have been much slower ever since the middle ages. Meaning that progress to space travel may have taken much, much longer that the several hundred years it has taken for us. Though, this is just speculation on my part. Would have to wait for Black Library to write a book in more detail to confirm/deny. But wanted to pose an alternative as you mention that life does indeed evolve to suit its environment. But even 10000 years would be too short a time to evolve to suit a star outputting much more radiation. Though now I think about it ... their planets magnetic field could have failed, like on mars, this would cause similar effects.

[@totktonadafrakc5948]

@Combat Veteran Reacts particulary necrons DO have technology to predict future. eg cast of chronomanser. They put themself to slumber due to Orican the Diviner prediction

[@kbairwolf]

I believe it is emotion that connects to the warp, not souls inherently. The Tau even have minimal warp presence yet have souls.

[@Damanur1]

About computer size of a planet. It is a concept of a Jupiter Brain. It actualy can model whole bunch of a persons choises in real life in about 15 seconds. Like one person life each 15 seconds whith all possible choises that person can take.

[@angrygnome44]

20:35 what inconsistency? If you have no soul, you have nothing with which to interact with the warp through.

[@wanttogetfood]

Ctan are calculable in raw power but their hax powers cant be put into numbers.

[@FireRevanShadow]

So all things with souls have a connection to the warp. It is just some souls have almost no presence in the warp and thus can't do anything with the warp (They do have a connection to the warp but it is just so small as to be almost undetectable). IF we look at the tau, they have souls but their presence in the warp is miniscule. So it was probably the same deal with the necrons.

[@brandonott7044]

I heard a theory a long time ago that stated that the Tau were in fact necronter but the colony devolved to a Stone Age civilization and was forgotten by the rest of the necronter race before they became necrons. But it was just a theory

[@DoctorM42]

Necrons know about cloning. It's just that what they really want is soul/mind transfer tech.

[@Chousakan]

The infinite and the divine is great. Get the audio book for full immersion.