How do Necrons work? This shit with recent refluffing went out of hand and I never understood them to begin with

How do Necrons work? This shit with recent refluffing went out of hand and I never understood them to begin with.
They were people made into machines - but what was left from people? There are no souls inside them, cause no warp shenanigans for them. No flesh either - living metal, albeit regenerating, wasn't made from their bodies and isn't organic.
So are they simply robots? Then, again, if we take the current fluff - only troops are mindless machines, the upper echelon has personalities - then why no warp? AIs are susceptible to possession, aren't they?

They're just skeleton-themed robots.

Their forebears fashioned the spires that contain the Eye of Terror--they're not about to let Warpery in their brain cage.

The Tau and their machines are not, why should Necrontyr who lacked that vulnerability become vulnerable once their conscience is uploaded into a machinebody?

Then why no warp? They are too complex for automatons, again, they are even clan feuds right now.

This is actually why Necrons are so eager to get back into fleshy bodies; the digital soul does not feel RIGHT.

So they do have souls uploaded to the bodies, but their superior tech protects them?

Races need to specifically develop warp sensitivity. Machines getting infested/iron men going bad had more to do with the humans running around than the machines themselves (initially).

Not all of them, though.

Their souls were never vulnerable beforehand, just like Tau are invulnerable to possession. They didn't become more vulnerable as machines because emotion is the basis for daemonic incursion/manifestation, and their emotions are probably more sedated with eccentricities being more errors with memory loops than "feelings" driving irrational acts.

See the necrons are confusing, at least in regards to their warriors, in that it's hard to tell what the point of the biotransferrence was.

Creatures in 40k are made up of three primary components: the body, the mind (seat of some of the conscious), and the soul (source of psychic power, sometimes conscious depending on power).

The necrontyr had almost no soul to begin with, but the biotransferrence removed anything that was left. But the necron warriors ALSO don't retain their minds, and have new bodies. So if the soul energy was just disposed of, what the hell was the point of "converting" necrontyr civilians? They might as well have just made robots from scratch, unless SOME small portion of the mind was used. That, or necron computers were made by copying organic necrontyr brains, similar to other sci-fi in which AI are created by an imprint of an organic brain.

Question is, why did they build the pylons back then ?

I doubt that they were able to predict Slaanesh and the Eye of Terror all the way back then. So they must have built them for some other reason.

To stop the suffering of the body.

The way I see it is that the Necrontyr were always ambitious due to their short lifespans, having evolved on planet Cancer. They waged intense civil war. When the C'tan approached the nobles with the plan of changing into eternal bodies they planned to install loyalty programs into civilians from the start to reduce in fighting, leaving nobles only weary of each other.

Would have worked out great for them but they never knew that the C'tan planned to betray them and eat their souls. Originally the Necrontyr were supposed to change into eternal machines with their emotions intact, the populace would be brainwashed but relatively ok. Since their souls were all consumed the C'tan could have left a sense of the noble's minds and imbeded it into them to keep them as loyal general, explaining why they are the closest remnants to what the race once was.

Because the war in heaven was against the Old One who were all about Warp fuckery.
So they built tech to shut it down and after shit went down the pylons helped contain the Eye as a lucky side affect after the Old One lost and died out.

>But the necron warriors ALSO don't retain their minds,

The codex says that Necrontyr plebs were thrown into Necron bodies that couldn't store all their feelings and memories and atop of that they were lobotmized .

So what's your problem, pleb? You cannot read?

>, what the hell was the point of "converting" necrontyr civilians?

It was a gift that cannot be rejected. Immortality and eternal service to their royal masters. It was their duty as plebs.

And by the way, Necron minds were converted to living energy and uploaded into Necron bodies. That's why psykers can detect emotion from Necrons. Necron are not run by AI but by living minds.

>AIs are susceptible to possession, aren't they?
A lot of the fluff in the novels, like in the Sisters book, indicate that they, and all their technology, are blanks.

Souls have a literal representation in 40k, actually completely separate from our classical interpretation of self.

A soul is just your reflection or presence in the warp, nothing more. You can still be conscious and self-aware without a soul (ex.pariahs).

If anything is left from what they were it's their minds and consciousness, some of that is slipping away in time however because of hardware problems.

Think of them as the post singularity humanity, but partially flawed because they haven't become a collective and their hybernation has had a negative effect on their minds.

>That's why psykers can detect emotion from Necrons

Except they can't Necrons are blanks and only exude an aura of despair and emptiness to psykers (even non-psykers for that matter).

My only guess for preserving warriors rather than manufacturing them is because the mind is more adaptive or advantageous than raw mechanical programing. Making them better at their job than otherwise. Warriors only lost their memories and emotions but are still able to reason and problem solve.

I'm led to assume that necrons are dissimilar to robots the same way blanks are dissimilar to normal people.

Robots can have a soul, since there's a consciousness, but the necrons don't not because they are robot but because their souls were snatched by the c'tan during the transfer, maybe if the biotransference wasn't rigged they would have retained their souls, who knows?

The process of biotransference separated their minds from their original organic bodies, but also separated them from their souls.

>I doubt that they were able to predict Slaanesh and the Eye of Terror all the way back then.
Orikan actually did (predict the Fall at least), but anyway, the Cadian pylons being Necron-built is Oldcron fluff, as part of their plan to permanently separate realspace from the warp. Cadia was simply one pylon site among many.

For Newcrons, if the pylons are still theirs, then . So the same root reason, just without the rather more drastic ultimate goal Oldcrons had.

Pic related.

Pic also related. And quotes from the current codex:

>WARRIORS

>Marching across the smoking battlefields of the 41st Millennium in relentless metallic ranks, Necron Warriors are the unfeeling foot soldiers of the phaerons. Once, long ago, these were the common people of the Necrontyr. Their minds reduced to a shadow of consciousness, they have become the slave legions of the Overlords. Traded and branded like livestock, Necron Warriors are valued only for the destruction they can visit upon the foe. The phaerons coldly send them into battle to crush their enemies beneath an avalanche of living metal.

>Even with only a glimmer of consciousness to guide it, a Necron Warrior is a fearsome and resilient foe. Armed with ancient energy weapons, they can scythe down their enemies with lethal volleys of gauss flayer fire, while their unyielding metal bodies repair themselves should they sustain damage. That the remains of the Necrontyr’s mind, trapped in the Necron Warrior’s time-worn form, is only vaguely aware of the ebb and flow of battle, makes little difference to its foes as they are ground underfoot.


>NOVOKH
>The crimson armour of the Novokh is a bloody legacy of past victories over the unworthy. Though creatures of living metal long parted with their flesh, the Novokh remember the rites of blooding undertaken by their warriors during the ancient Wars of Secession. The favoured of the Novokh would daub their faces and arms in the blood of those whom they slew in battle, painting spidery patterns of hieroglyphs telling grim tales of carnage and death.

>Millennia later, the Novokh still remember these ceremonies, and their Overlords paint their legions crimson in honour of the ritual spilling of blood. To the Warriors and Immortals of the Novokh, this fragment of their past awakens a spark of violent pride and spurs them on to acts of murder.

>maybe if the biotransference wasn't rigged they would have retained their souls, who knows?

No, their manufactured units like wraiths and scarabs are also incorruptible but were never living organisms. So your logic is flawed, because they can just create blank/null based AI.

And might as well throw this in too. One of the darker bits of Newcron lore (goes for Warrior fluff as a whole, really).

>So did the Ghost Arks often convey the broken bodies of those beaten near unto death by the government's enforcers, for only a spark of life and memory was required for biotransference.

That may be part of it but I also think the previous poster has the right idea. It's like real-world ancient Egyptian retainer sacrifice writ large. It was a way for his actual kingdom to serve him eternally in their new life. Even practical benefits aside there's some great symbolic or spiritual power in that.

But those AI aren't meant to be intelligent in the same way a synthetic human-like mind is, or are they?
To me they look more like very intelligent and efficient beasts than conscious AI like the humans made.

The souls are a reflection in the watp. When they became bots, they lost this. This also affected their ability to feel and emote. Their minds remained and were put into the new bodies. I believe they have programs that simulate emotions but I haven't read a newcron book in a while to confirm that.

Robots and machines are different for two reasons. One, sufficiently advanced AI and old enough machines develop a warp signature without a protective soul. This makes them super vulnerable to possession, which is why AI are banned in the Imperium of Man. The necrons are protected from this.

Second, machines can accidently have runes or symbols, as well as other accidental equations written into them that basically invite possession. Another pretty big issue and why the ad mech is slow to approve bew shit. Necrons avoid that, given their whole genocide of the most psychically powerful race in the galaxy.

Yeah, Canoptek Spyders are control units for Wraiths and Scarabs, and even they are still non-sentient. Scarabs, on the other hand, will revert to just eating literally everything in their path to make more Scarabs out of if not directly controlled.

>just like Tau are invulnerable to possession
But they aren't. The Gods just don't bother with them because there is a whole galaxy of much more plentiful and tastier souls everywhere. Why eat mud when you can have lobster?

In the glory days of the GW website in the early 00s there was even a conversion guide for corrupted Crisis suits.

>Except they can't Necrons are blanks and only exude an aura of despair and emptiness to psykers (even non-psykers for that matter).

Except they can. In Damnos, Tiggers can feel the spark emotion emerging from the frame of the Necron Lord.

Actually, a daemon tried to possess an Ethereal. It failed because the Ethereal was a being in perfect balance.

It tried to possess a Tau Fire Warrior, the Fire Warrior drove it away.

And yet Khorne could influence another Fire warrior enough to make the game happen

The novel made about that game didn't have Kais getting influenced anything Khornate until the end fight.

He fights the Daemon Lord who transformed himself into a Khornate daemon in desperation. He uses his Khornate aura to infect Kais and draw him out of cover. Kais gets infected by the Khornate rage fire a few minutes before breaking out and purifying himself from taint via his belief and focus in the Greater Good.

Thanks for clarifying that