# C'tan retconned into oblivion.



## SoulGazer (Jun 14, 2009)

Welp, I have the Necron Codex, and it's official: Anything you thought were C'tan were probably not. The codex states that no one can really tell a C'tan apart from, say, a Daemon or other energy-based being(cause there are so many different kinds, right?) except the Necrons; not even the Eldar know how many are still out and about. So basically, something scary with super powers may or may not be a C'tan. It even states that Imperial records are so terrible that they're probably all wrong. There is no mention at all of the Ultramarines encountering the Nightbringer. No mention of the Deceiver linked with Pariahs(Which aren't mentioned at all in the codex.) Nothing at all of the Void Dragon on Mars(Which it probably isn't true anymore.)

Everything that we thought we knew was wrong, apparently, and we are advised to simply take all that stuff as lies and misinformation. "Just pretend it didn't happen." C'tan are footnotes in the history of the War in Heaven, and now used as semi-useful, sometimes-annoying MCs on the tabletop.

I mad. 

Yes, the new Cron stuff is cool. Yes, I like the dynasties and the characters and whatnot. But to have your race's gods be the sole reason that the Imperium exists as it does was pretty darn cool, and was the major reason why I loved Crons so much. Now? Who knows? There's nothing that explicitly denies all the old C'tan fluff, but there's now text that heavily implies all that stuff was untrue in the first place.

Ok, rant over, what do you guys think?


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

SoulGazer said:


> not even the Eldar know how many are still out and about. So basically, something scary with super powers may or may not be a C'tan.


This in particular caught my attention as being wierd. Does that mean that it is no longer canon that only four C'tan exist? Or is it simply the idea that the 'shards' can be easily confused for the real deal because of their power level.



> It even states that Imperial records are so terrible that they're probably all wrong.


This isn't news, the Imperium's always been a pretty bad source for accurate information. Despite many viewing their in-character specualtions as fact.



> There is no mention at all of the Ultramarines encountering the Nightbringer. No mention of the Deceiver linked with Pariahs(Which aren't mentioned at all in the codex.) Nothing at all of the Void Dragon on Mars(Which it probably isn't true anymore.)


No mention doesn't mean it didn't happen. Given that GW generally considers everything it's ever written to be canon I would still view these events as having occured. This is particularly true of the Void Dragon as that info is presented by the Dragon (or a being pretending to be the Dragon while trapped on Mars) itself and though I see plenty of reasons to interpret the vision as allagorical I see no reason to dismiss it as false.



> But to have your race's gods be the sole reason that the Imperium exists as it does was pretty darn cool,


That's some pretty heavy duty Necron fanboism there. If any one being can claim to have created the Impeirum it's the Emperor (as in the being that moved the Void Dragon to Mars in the first place) not the Void Dragon (I assume that's what you're talking about).


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## AlexHolker (Apr 27, 2011)

I think the new C'tan are a mistake. I think the "Necrons overthrow and enslave the Star Gods" concept is ridiculous.

Here's how I would have done it:

After the C'tan screwed the Necrons, the Necrons were their thralls. If a C'tan says jump, its Necrons jump. If they say go harvest sentients to feed to the C'tan, the Necrons do it
The Outsider and Nightbringer do their cannibalism thing, destroying most of the other C'tan. In the wake of this, those C'tan's Necrons are still under C'tan control, but their influence is attenuated.
This gives you a spectrum of Necrons, ranging from those whose personalities are crushed by the influence of the C'tan to those who still serve the C'tan, but have the capacity to think and work towards their own goals, like harvesting sentients for their own experiments. The former gets the projections of the C'tan's power (think Harbinger in ME2), the latter gets lesser lords and Necron special characters.



SoulGazer said:


> But to have your race's gods be the sole reason that the Imperium exists as it does was pretty darn cool, and was the major reason why I loved Crons so much.


Only if you're a Necron player. To everyone else, it made them seem more like bad author insertion characters.

Don't get me wrong, I liked what the C'tan meant to the Necrons, but the "everything that ever happened is the C'tan's fault" stuff was just obnoxious. The only part I liked was that the God-Emperor of Mankind beat up a Star God, locked it in a box, and forced it to tell humanity its secrets.


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## SoulGazer (Jun 14, 2009)

MEQinc said:


> This in particular caught my attention as being wierd. Does that mean that it is no longer canon that only four C'tan exist? Or is it simply the idea that the 'shards' can be easily confused for the real deal because of their power level. It states that while most of them were blown up and captured, it doesn't account for the whole pantheon. However, it then goes on for a whole paragraph saying that just because there may be C'tan out there doesn't mean anyone actually encountered them or would even know what they were if they did find them. "There might be four C'tan, four-thousand, or any number in between."
> 
> No mention doesn't mean it didn't happen. Given that GW generally considers everything it's ever written to be canon I would still view these events as having occured. This is particularly true of the Void Dragon as that info is presented by the Dragon (or a being pretending to be the Dragon while trapped on Mars) itself and though I see plenty of reasons to interpret the vision as allagorical I see no reason to dismiss it as false.
> The way it's worded really wants you to forget that stuff happened. The tone of the text says it all, I dunno how else to explain it, but when you read it for yourself you'll probably see which direction they want you to go with it. They've retconned stuff before, I don't see why they'd stop now. I still believe these events did take place, and the book even says that _something_ probably happened. But what it was exactly that happened is up for debate, and heavily implied to not be C'tan.
> ...


The wording makes all the difference. You'd think that if there were even rumors or myths about the Void Dragon being on Mars it'd be in the Necron codex. It doesn't even mention when Necrons landed on Mars.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

So you agree with the Old Ones but not the C'Tan, which are simply counterpoints to them?

And you hate how the Necrons overthrew their Vampire/Daemon/Gods when working as an entire race, yet you love how a single man was able to capture one like a man might have trapped a wild animal, and broken it into domestic life? Wow.

I don't have an opinion too much either way until I get the book in my hands.


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## SoulGazer (Jun 14, 2009)

AlexHolker said:


> Only if you're a Necron player. To everyone else, it made them seem more like bad author insertion characters.


Very much like Primarchs, actually. Yes, it's silly, but I still liked it. I don't begrudge anyone serving the all-powerful God-Emperor, after all. It's 40k, it's supposed to be a tad ridiculous.


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## SoulGazer (Jun 14, 2009)

Vaz said:


> So you agree with the Old Ones but not the C'Tan, which are simply counterpoints to them?
> 
> And you hate how the Necrons overthrew their Vampire/Daemon/Gods when working as an entire race, yet you love how a single man was able to capture one like a man might have trapped a wild animal, and broken it into domestic life? Wow.
> 
> I don't have an opinion too much either way until I get the book in my hands.


I don't recall stating opinions on any of that, actually.


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## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

At the end of the day something had to be done to the c'tan. After all GW has been fairly firm about not allowing primarch level up creatures in 40k or even in appocalypse, and it seems GW's desire to keep them in the codex meant that they had to justify them being greatly reduced in power. Its a shame they did not just allow for some straglers that escaped the ire of the entire necron race like the big 4, yet I guess they also wanted to lazily justify not having to make new models for all the lesser defeated c'tan. Hence why the big four are not mentioned as being whole.


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## AlexHolker (Apr 27, 2011)

Vaz said:


> And you hate how the Necrons overthrew their Vampire/Daemon/Gods when working as an entire race, yet you love how a single man was able to capture one like a man might have trapped a wild animal, and broken it into domestic life? Wow.


Don't be obtuse. It wasn't "a single man", it was the God-Emperor of Mankind, one of the most powerful entities in the entire setting.



SoulGazer said:


> Very much like Primarchs, actually.


Not at all like the Primarchs. Nobody's saying "the only reason the Orks exist is because of Marneus Calgar" or "Alcoholism never existed until Leman Russ invented it".


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

SoulGazer said:


> Very much like Primarchs, actually. Yes, it's silly, but I still liked it. I don't begrudge anyone serving the all-powerful God-Emperor, after all. It's 40k, it's supposed to be a tad ridiculous.


To expand on what _AlexHolker_ said. Not only are the Primarchs not credited with infulencing the development of any other race (excepting instances where they ended it) but they, and their role, are a long established part of the 40k fluff. When the C'tan were introduced it seemed like the writers were desperately trying to come up with ways for them to be relivant, while also pretending they'd always existed. So you got, frankly odd fluff like the Nightbringer inventing 'fear of death', the Void Dragon being credited with the creation of the Adeptus Mechanicus (and thus having a potentially heavy impact on human technology). All in all it just struck me as being very heavy handed and not particularly well thought out.

Also, _AlexHolker_, Marneus Calgar isn't a Primarch, just a Mary Sue.


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## SoulGazer (Jun 14, 2009)

@MEQinc, AlexHolker

I actually meant about them being bad author insertion characters. Just read Battle of the Fang, for instance. Magnus flies back and forth from being all-powerful to having to "remember what he was" and it's just a tad silly. Like they want to keep them in the books cause they're popular, but they don't really know what else to do with them if there aren't other Primarchs around to fight them. They seem to stomp anything anyone else anyone throws at them (Avatars of Khaine, for instance,) and are only really defeated by their own dumb mistakes and poor judgement.

Like the C'tan, they're cool characters that don't really have a place in 40k combat. I'm ok with that, I just wish they didn't ignore all the rumors and hints they'd set up prior to this codex. All those dozens of threads over the years about the Void Dragon being on Mars and not a single mention of it in this codex. There was in the first codex, however, which is why I believe it has now been retconned into some other type of entity.


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

SoulGazer said:


> I actually meant about them being bad author insertion characters. Like they want to keep them in the books cause they're popular, but they don't really know what else to do with them if there aren't other Primarchs around to fight them.


Okay first, that's not what an author-insert character is. An author-insert character is a character that the author themselves either wishes they were or thinks they are; or someone who spouts the authors ideas and opinions within the work. What you're describing is more like a franchise-character, like the way Wolverine shows up in X-Men First Class for absolutely no reason other than he's Wolverine. 

Of topic and irrelevant I know, just... I feel the need to correct random people on the internet sometimes. 



> Like the C'tan, they're cool characters that don't really have a place in 40k combat. I'm ok with that, I just wish they didn't ignore all the rumors and hints they'd set up prior to this codex.


I agree with this completely. My problem, slight though it ever was, was simply that the C'tan were pretty much Deus Ex Machina's of the entire 40k verse whereas Primarchs are only Deus Ex Machina's of the stories they're in, and even then not always.

Plus Avatars aren't that hard. If it can fight on the table, it should be owned by anything that can't (Primarchs, Chaos Gods, the Emperor, C'tan, I'm going to put the Pheonix Lords here cause I think they should be taken off the table, etc).


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## Barnster (Feb 11, 2010)

I think that alot of the changes to necrons are not great

My main anger with the change is that in previous edition the c'tan were star vampires, now they were little more than the chaos gods, who consumed the souls of the necrontyr within the biotransference chambers (my biggest gripe with the codex, main fluff event of the tranformation is brushed over, theres mentions of a necrontyr v necron civil wave but is not really expanded on "Insert Dr who city of steel ep here") now they wanted souls

shame as a considerably larger number of ctan are mentioned but never given any character


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## mob16151 (Oct 20, 2011)

AlexHolker said:


> Don't be obtuse. It wasn't "a single man", it was the God-Emperor of Mankind, one of the most powerful entities in the entire setting.
> 
> 
> Not at all like the Primarchs. Nobody's saying "the only reason the Orks exist is because of Marneus Calgar" or "*Alcoholism never existed until Leman Russ invented it*".


Space marine alcoholism didn't :grin:


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## Deadeye776 (May 26, 2011)

I don't think any space marines new how to party before Russ went Animal House on Fenris. I'm over this change in the C'tan. I thought the concept of the Void Dragon was cool. However if this all is true then this means Mechanicus was a waste of my time.


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## Justindkates (Apr 30, 2010)

Well remember guys the Ctan was pulled out of thin air during 3rd edition. So if they can make it up on a dime they make it never happen on a dime. This is GW we are talking about here.


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

Barnster said:


> I think that alot of the changes to necrons are not great
> 
> My main anger with the change is that in previous edition the c'tan were star vampires, now they were little more than the chaos gods, who consumed the *souls *of the necrontyr within the biotransference chambers (my biggest gripe with the codex, main fluff event of the tranformation is brushed over, theres mentions of a necrontyr v necron civil wave but is not really expanded on "Insert Dr who city of steel ep here") now they wanted souls
> r


Is souls the actual word used? 

Because if that's so it's a 180 degree turn on their old fluff. The c'tan consumed your physical energy not you soul, which is warp energy. That's a rather important change as warp energy was anathema to the c'tan.


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

Rems said:


> Is souls the actual word used?
> 
> Because if that's so it's a 180 degree turn on their old fluff. The c'tan consumed your physical energy not you soul, which is warp energy. That's a rather important change as warp energy was anathema to the c'tan.


It says this:
"In that moment, he knew with cold certainty that the price for physical immortality had been the loss of his soul."

Which was in reference to the Silent King and his feelings post transformation. 

It later goes onto the say that the C'tan were "glutted on the life force of the Necronty" when it goes into the eventual defeat of the old ones. 

I don't think it ever actually says that the C'tan CONSUMED the souls of the Necrontyr, merely that the transformation resulted in the loss of their soul. Considering that, I would bet that the soul was connected with the organic form, and when it died, or the consciousness of necron the was transferred, the soul was lost. Could be wrong though.


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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

@Rems: It says the c`tan fed off the life energies,. nowhere did it mention souls being fed on. :no: 


My take on this is less extreme. To me, the emphasis on individual c`tan has vanished to be replaced by more focus on the necrons. The c`tan are alluded to as a whole, with only the Deceiver being mentioned individually. It is still the Deceiver credited with engineering the downfall of the c`tan, however that is the extent of any individual mention. 

After this it is said that the necrons rebelled, destroying some of the c`tan and shattering the rest into thousands of fragments which were then contained inside the tesseract labyrinths. Exactly how they did it is only credited to their knowledge and technology being up to the task. The necrons struck back at the c`tan`s most vulnerable time and took advantage of the star gods` arrogance. Even so, billions of necrons were lost, so there can be no pretending that the necrons "bitch slapped" the c`tan in any way. 

Also, every allusion to the c`tan in existing fluff is still perfectly valid. Many c`tan shards are unaccounted for, meaning that they can have interactions beyond the necrons control. 


Therefore, it is safe to assume that the UM batled a shard of the Nightbringer beneath Pavonis, the Emperor defeated a shard of the Dragon on ancient Terra, and one or perhaps more shards of the Deceiver have been playing their trickeries upoin the young races for millennia.


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## Raptors8th (Jul 3, 2009)

MEQinc said:


> Plus Avatars aren't that hard. If it can fight on the table, it should be owned by anything that can't (Primarchs, Chaos Gods, the Emperor, C'tan, I'm going to put the Pheonix Lords here cause I think they should be taken off the table, etc).


Phoenix Lords? Since when are they _anywhere_ near Primarchs?


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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

MEQinc said:


> If it can fight on the table, it should be owned by anything that can't


Sorry, but what logic leads you to that conclusion? 

Primarchs and the Emperor don`t fight on TT because they don`t exist as living entities in the current setting, not because they`re too OP for the games. Remember Angron was given White Dwarf rules which were little more than buffed Daemon Prince rules. The Chaos gods don`t exist on TT because their very existence is wholly bound to the warp. 

By your logic I can say the Silent King is on par with the Emperor despite the fluff giving us no evience to suggest he is anything more than a necron overlord with higher status than the others.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

AlexHolker said:


> Don't be obtuse. It wasn't "a single man", it was the God-Emperor of Mankind, one of the most powerful entities in the entire setting.


So an Emperor of Man who was beaten by his own son, a Primarch, was able to defeat a C'Tan, a race of God-like Creatures in power worshipped by a race that ruled the Galaxy before there was such a thing as even the race of man, let alone a civilisation of man, and then imprison and break it? Right.


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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

The c`tan were described as being tied to the fundamental fabric of the materium itself and as such they were nigh on impossible to destroy. Even the necrons acknowledged this. The best they could accomplish was to shatter the c`tan and divide their essences into thousands of shards. 

These shards are *powerful but still very much fallible*. It`s a safe assumption that every encounter previously with a "c`tan" was actually an encounter with a shard. Given the description of the things this is not difficult to believe.


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## thelastonestanding (Mar 21, 2009)

Vaz said:


> So an Emperor of Man who was beaten by his own son, a Primarch, was able to defeat a C'Tan, a race of God-like Creatures in power worshipped by a race that ruled the Galaxy before there was such a thing as even the race of man, let alone a civilisation of man, and then imprison and break it? Right.


A god-like man, the strongest known psycher, who is eventually worshipped by the largest Empire in the current galactic situation, beats a god-like entity that was tied to the material world and vulnerable to psychic attack.
Not that shocking, especially when we have no idea how this fight actually went down.
Plus, Horus was basically a demigod, pimped out to the extreme by the gods of Chaos when he fought the Emperor... and even then, it's debatable whether he'd actually have done any real damage to the Emperor if the whole father-son relationship hadn't come in to play.


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## jaysen (Jul 7, 2011)

It's strange that people assume that a person in power would be personally all powerfull on the battlefield. The reason for coming to power can be cunning, charisma, family backing, financial wizardry, murder, brilliance, whatever. It doesn't make you a close combat genius or give you superman abilities.


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## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

Which makes perfect sense in reality and in some 40k factions, but when it comes to the emperor and the primarchs they do seem to be freakish beings that draw inhuman amounts of power latently from the raw psychic energy of the universe, for not even c'tan and carifex's shrug of a power fist to the face, something that russ did with apparent ease.

I do like the fact they are moving away from HQ's being retarded shit brick houses and allowing them to generate army buffs.



jaysen said:


> It's strange that people assume that a person in power would be personally all powerfull on the battlefield. The reason for coming to power can be cunning, charisma, family backing, financial wizardry, murder, brilliance, whatever. It doesn't make you a close combat genius or give you superman abilities.


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

Serpion5 said:


> Sorry, but what logic leads you to that conclusion?


The idea that things which can be represented on the table top must adhere to the limits presented there (at least slightly) in their appearances in the fluff. Whereas an individual presented only in the fluff is not so constrained.



> Primarchs and the Emperor don`t fight on TT because they don`t exist as living entities in the current setting, not because they`re too OP for the games.


That's not really the point. Plus, if we look at the things they do in the HH novels, they would be OP in the games. (Unless they cost thousands of points but again, not the point.)



> Remember Angron was given White Dwarf rules which were little more than buffed Daemon Prince rules.


And I feel that was a mistake. The Primarchs are presented in the fluff as being far too powerful to effectively be portrayed on the table top and I'm okay with that. 



> By your logic I can say the Silent King is on par with the Emperor despite the fluff giving us no evience to suggest he is anything more than a necron overlord with higher status than the others.


That's not my logic. I never said that anything not presented on the table was equal in power. I said it was greater than what was. So by my logic, the Silent King can mop the floor with a regular overlord.


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## Vallyuk (Nov 7, 2011)

Do you think its fair to say then that the Necron Shards are similar to how the Eldar Avatars came to be? I.e shattered peices of their God Khaine?


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