How would you write Necromancy into 40k, in the vein of Nagash and the Tomb Kings/Vampire counts. Something specifically dark and magical, yet unique and different from Chaos. Would Nagash work in 40k as an ancient Death God whose origins are forgotten?
Specifically, whats a good way to make Space Vampire Counts?
How might you do other Space WHF analogies?
Necrons and C'tan technology. I think we had a series of threads a while back about 40k vampires in the form of Imperial nobles using and being corrupted by weird necron nanotech
necrons or admech. mechanicus uses braindead people and dead tissue all the time plus *not* zombies from reanimating with tech modules and stuff. crons probably have legit zombies they can make when they tried to undo the whole spoop thing
crons for spoop
...
once all D&D threads will transform into posts in D&Dgeneral, I will agree with such suggestions. Otherwise, fuck you.
40k is science fiction fantasy, but fantasy pert is huge in it. No problem therefore with going with "regular" necromancy, as in, a rogue psyker learning ancient (possibly Eldar) ways of tapping into the world of the dead, and manipulating spirits and dead bodies.
It will always be related to Chaos though. Even in WF all magic comes from Chaos, in 40k it is even more a thing.
But it can be Chaos as in dark ritual of blackest magic, and doesn't have to be Chaos as in summoning deamons in the flesh, or working in consort with Traitor Legions.
Pic related. They could provide an excellent foil to Necrons. Both are horrifying, ancient races with highly advanced technology. But while Necron technology is based around the power of living metal, Slaugth technology focuses on the mastery of living organisms. And while Necrons view other races as vermin to be exterminated, Slaugth view other living creatures as cattle to be feasted on.
If all magic comes from Chaos, why are all the non-Chaos dark magic users able to resist the Dark Gods so?
And why does it seem so different from the Fire, Brimestone, and Mutation of Chaos?
We already have some Nurgle stuff but I’d consider taking dead people and cybernetically reviving them.
Most of the most direct vampire parallels in 40k are generally edge and peripheral stuff, at least for humans (the deldar do kinda fit the niche but they aren't human and never were, so part of the fundamentals of vampirism is lost), like the Halo Devices and a few bits of horror from the Old Night.
That would actually be the direction I'd look for vampires in space - less chaos-y renegades, maybe some xenos with slaves, the darker mechanicum stuff and so on - using psyker powers and dark technology to live forever and feed on/dominate humanity.
There's like a billion references to shit like this in the "crusade" portions of the info in the HH books, vampire analogues were a BIG problem for humanity over the Old Night, starting on Terra and seemingly pretty much everywhere - Warlords with unearned gene-tech, soul-eating psyker-kings, xenos enslaving entire systems ect. Hell, Mortarion's xenos overlord father is explicitly a necromancer, and many legion battles are against humans who have avoided natural death and gone totally nuts. And this does basically apply to the admech too, who 100% use zombies and can't die...
All magic, all psychic power, is manipulating energy from the Warp. Even Eldar, even the Emperor himself, when he walked among men, harnessed power kf the Warp.
Same thing in WF - all magic comes from Chaos, and is devided into eight lores because humans are not strong enough to wield High Magic (all eight winds combined) or Dark Magic (raw, undivided power of Chaos). Necromancy, as all magic, is Chaos-based, but I am talking Chaos as a raw warping power from beyond, not Chaos as dark gods and their servants.
This is all pretty basic lore from those settings user.
Why are all the minor xenos and periphery stuff of 40k the most interesting part of the setting?
Because they don't have to be everywhere, and they don't have to be balanced in any way - if you can cordon them off then they cam be as powerful and interesting as you like - which includes low-power, they don't have to compete on the galactic stage at all either.
They can also bw much more personal, because they don't have to be a combat force visible on the 28mm scale - they can be giant or tiny, because they're working in narrative or RPGs, not the tabletop
I mean, the heresy-era mechanicus had zombie tech-thralls, that's not especially chaos - it's not even a traitor-only option. Also there are zombie marines at one point, while they're not on the chaos side no-one knows WHAT they are.
But yeah, Nurgle has had actual zombies as part of his wheelhouse for at least a decade, so if you want slow undead he's your man
All true, but OP wanted it "in the veins of Tomb Kings/Vampire Counts". So a necromancer using black magick to raise legions of the dead. At least that's how I get it.
Ignoring that, you could say Imperium is filled with undead slaves - servitors. And Nurgle has all other kinds of not-truly-alive-not-truly-dead things.
Also, Eldar actually practice necromancy, binding the spirits of their dead to wraithconstructs (notice the name) and having special warlocks to control them.
I recognize that all power comes from the Warp, but I was questioning the logic that all Dark Magic is Chaos based (i.e. from the 4 Chaos Gods)
Something being from the Warp doesn't make it Chaos, any more than the Emperor or Sigmar acting through the Warp is Chaos.
>Necromancy, as all magic, is Chaos-based, but I am talking Chaos as a raw warping power from beyond
So basically its Warp based, *not* Chaos based. Chaos has very specific annotations user. Not all dark magic in Warhammer fantasy is Chaos. Nagash specifically opposes the Chaos Gods.
A techpriest using dark alchemy to frankenstein undead thralls is definitely down that path - especially when you have electro-priests who can steal a body's living energy. Tech-vampires are very much an option, is what I'm saying.
Likewise, as noted, going the vampire route is fairly common for rogue pskyers and their ilk if you want magic, and chaos has a lot of options in that regard also. A Night Lord champ who drinks blood and has undead renegades wouldn't be out of character in the slightest, for example.
Also yeah, Necrons, Eldar Wraithdudes and Deldar everything all do the vampirism thing.
Doing something Nagash-esque specifically though, if that's what OP is after that's a lot harder - the C'tan can just about take that role, but it's not a great fit by any means.
One thing thats interesting about the Vampire Counts is their aesthetic. They are inherently related to the Empire. They look and act like something from the Empires past (having been actual counts and nobility) and they bring that with them as necromancers.
What would be a good aesthetic for a proxy of a similar in 40k? Not necessarily vampires, but per say a "vision of a corrupt Imperial past". Perhaps something mimicing the style of the Dark Age of Technology (modern/sci fi ish style)?
Actually this is pretty good. Tech-Vampires working on undead servitors seems a good way to go.
Perhaps instead of Nagash, they directly worship the Void Dragon, which is deemed heretical by the actual AdMech. They are open to using DAoT / Shadowrun style ancient and forbidden technologies, defying the normal ethics and conventions of working with servitors and technology, but specifically are NOT Dark Mechanicus or Chaos Worshipers.
You could also ad in a thing about Nanites and Abominable Intelligence, in replacement of Vampirism. Infecting men and machines with ancient heretek as new minions, and being compelled to expand and infect more.
Yeah, heretek-but-not-in-the-chaos-way could easily work - as points out, a quasi-imperial aesthetic is important - vampires get a lot of what they are are from being very clearly once-human - the admech have that already, but they're also monastic, religious.
The DAoT was all about SCIENCE for science's sake, and when it all went to shit, as points out, that resulted in quite a number of vampire analogues.
The imperium's super-gothic imagery doesn't help carving out an aesthetic niche here, but I think if you're going the tech route you'd want it to look perhaps a bit cleaner but looking wrong (a bit like genestealers do I guess) - tech is less clunky than the imperial equivalent, but it distorts the body longer, thinner and more vicious.
Going the "corrupted noble" route might also be cool, but 40k's elites always look pretty cadaverous and creepy, because their methods of living for several hundred years aren't all that far off vampirism anyway and the imperium has been gothic for 10000 years
>The coolest Necron unit is no longer canon
All magic in Warhammer comes from Chaos. If you use magic to defeat a Chaos Warrior, you are harnessing the powers of Chaos to destroy a mortal servant of a Dark God. Thus, a Necromancer opposing Chaos forces is using Dark Magic, Chaos being it's source, to grow in power to deny them.
While I don't think it's good that it was essentially "yeah, so these ancient evil dudes have been fucking with you for millennia and there's nothing you can do about it, or even" , I do miss the pariahs a bit. And it gave them a good reason to have some interest in humanity that wasn't war I guess. They were very ominous, which fit with the oldcron themes really nice, but it was always kind of weird how the necrons managed to, well, necron-ise them.
Really wouldn't fit with the newcrons though.
Didn't that not used to be the case? Because that sounds gay, gayer than normal
Are you seriously going to argue semantics here?
The Warp is the Warp, the Immaterium, what have you. Yes it is the stuff of Chaos, but to just blanket everything that comes from it as "Chaos" just adds to confusion. Because by that logic, Sigmar and Ulric themselves come from Chaos.
Nurgle, Tzeentch, Khorne, and Slaanesh are the 4 primary Chaos Gods. They -are- Chaos and they operate from the -Warp- as all other gods. But just calling everything from the Warp as Chaos is not helpful.
All magic comes from the Warp, but not all Magic is associated with *Chaos (*the four Chaos Gods)
Honestly?
I'd do the opposite. I'd make Necromancy primarily technological. Like a nano-machine swarm programmed with a faulty medical program that basically won't stop resurrecting bodies until they've been blasted into ash.
thats the sort of vein I agree with here
Genestealers are a lot like vampires.
Ad Mech has the cyber zombie stuff. Dark Eldar and Fabius probably make some frankenmonsters.