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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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I collect Necrons, I have to read this!

But the idea of being able to write fiction from a Necron perspective boggles me: I grew up with 3rd edition where the Necrons were mindless, enslaved reapers. Still not keen on the Newcrons tbh, I feel like it ruins their mystique and we already have undead pseudo-Egyptians in the Tomb Kings. But maybe Rath can change my mind.

I initially agreed with you back in the day, but I think in the end the change was for the better, if we are accepting the 40K universe is about more than just the tabletop game. If you want stories based in that universe, every single necron just being mindless is a problem. Like Tyranids, who struggle to be anything but almost a force of nature when written about in novels because there isn't a perspective in there that allows them to be protagonists in their own story.

And from the pov of the average guardsman all the basic infantry necrons are still mindless, remorseless, killing machines, it is only the higher echelons who have maintained sentience (Much like the Tomb Kings of course.)

If he doesn't, I doubt anyone will.

I will say that, personally, I've found the transition to be beneficial for the 40k setting. 40k already has a universal 'force of nature' antagonist, and that's the Tyranids. Oldcrons were just competing for a niche, and the transition has opened space for a number of interesting dynamics that offer an alternative narrative space. There's still narrative space for omnicidal machines, but giving the newcrons personality has allowed them to have, well, personality.

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