Immortal

"With a dozen legions of Immortals at my command, I could humble the stars themselves. One will be more than sufficient to crush your pathetic world."

— Imotekh the Stormlord, phaeron of the Sautekh Dynasty, regent of Mandragora

The Immortals were the favoured servants of the Necron dynasties in ancient days and now form the vanguard of their undying legions. When the Necrons first conquered the galaxy, they did so through the unfaltering and implacable onslaught of legion upon legion of Immortals.

These were the very elite of the Necrontyr armies and are the true fighting strength of the Necron dynasties; hardened veterans of ancient wars born anew in tireless, undying necrodermis bodies.

Still able to think and respond with a chill echo of intelligence, their martial power remains undimmed, as does their unflagging loyalty. Within the engrammic circuitry of each Immortal, there lingers a spark of the mortal soldier he once was.

Though heavily suppressed by the obedience protocols of its noble master, an Immortal can remember the triumph of the kill and the pleasure of humbling its foes.

The transition from mortal flesh to undying alien metal has only deepened the Immortals' hatred of their enemies. Stripped of weaknesses such as remorse and pity, and bereft of any fear of death, an Immortal kills without hesitation.

For hundreds of Terran years, the Immortals were a scourge upon all who stood between the Necrons and galactic domination. Now, the Immortal legions are but an echo of what they once were, for countless trillions were destroyed in the final days of the War in Heaven.

Yet billions more survived, and now wait only to be awakened from their Tomb Worlds to begin the reconquest of the galaxy for the Necrons. An Immortal's only desire is to enforce the will of his Necron Overlord and reclaim the glory of the Necron Empire.

Role[]

Necron Warriors come forth — A Necron Immortal armed with a massive Gauss Blaster leads a pair of Necron Warriors against the foe.

As the shock troops of a Tomb World's armies, Immortals have a far wider range and depth of reaction than Necron Warriors, for they have retained much of their tactical and strategic experience from eons ago. Indeed, in many ways, the biotransference to machine bodies and minds only sharpened the Immortals' ability to prosecute war in an efficient fashion.

Left to their own devices, a phalanx of Immortals continues to strive for victory using every tactic and stratagem at their disposal. This is not to say that Immortals do not have shortcomings. Most profound is the fact that they are incapable of learning and adapting to new means of battle.

On the rare occasions when Immortals are presented with a battlefield situation that cannot be conquered by ancient tactics, they will apply the counterstrategy they consider the closest match, regardless of its ultimate suitability. Fortunately, such instances are unusual for, no matter the advances in technology, war has changed little in the eons since the War in Heaven.

Immortals are capable of speech, albeit in flat and emotionless tones that are even more soulless than the hollow voices of the Necron Overlords. This enables them to not only provide clinically precise battlefield reports to their superiors but also to issue orders to Necron Warriors, a factor that often increases the efficiency of the entire battlefront.

Outside these parameters, Immortals are, at best, limited conversationalists, often falling prey to recursive loops of logic and procedure in place of conveying any truly relevant information. If presented with an enquiry or concept beyond its ancient understanding, an Immortal simply does not respond. This trait only serves to encourage the more arrogant Necron Overlords in their rambling and rhetorical soliloquies.

This ensures that a Nemesor's pre-battle address to his legions can go on for an interminably long time, as he scours his Immortals' silent forms for some glimmer of understanding and they, with the patience born of complete incomprehension, stare straight back, waiting for the order that will cast them into the maelstrom of combat once more.

Necronlegion12 — Immortals at the head of a Necron invasion force.

What Immortals lack in the flexibility of approach, they more than make up for in durability and firepower. Immortals are more thickly armoured in necrodermis than Necron Warriors and can weather a storm of Heavy Bolter or Assault Cannon fire with little more to show for it than fresh carbon-scoring on their already time-worn frames.

Even should an Immortal be felled, its threat is not ended, for its auto-repair systems are, if anything, somewhat even more efficient than the baseline of Necron Warriors.

Few foes can withstand the Immortals' return fire so easily. A single shot from one of their double-barreled Gauss Blasters can punch through most types of armour to strip flesh from bone, and the closer the Immortals come to their target, the shorter the interval between blistering volleys.

At that point, all the foe can do is dive for cover, but this offer's only a fool's hope of survival. None can hide from the Immortals -- their Gauss Blasters will scour every nook and cranny until nothing remains but floating ash on the wind.

In life, Immortals were the professional soldiery of the Necrontyr Empire. In death, they surpass the Necron Warriors in nearly every way. Possessed of even more resilient frames, Necron Immortals prove almost impervious to small arms.

Their training and experience in combat survived the process of bio-transference undiminished, and Immortals seem to have retained a brighter spark of intellect than their less favoured brethren, although only in regard to the practice of war.

Outside of combat, Immortals display about as much personality as a monotask servitor. Immortals are typically armed with Gauss Blasters, weapons even deadlier than the Gauss Flayers used by Necron Warriors.

Necronlegion13 — Necron Immortals armed with Tesla Carbines lead the assault

In one recent incident, however, a Brother Janos of the Crimson Fists Chapter reported that his Deathwatch Kill-team encountered Immortals within the Jericho Reach armed with an entirely different sort of weapon, one that emits crackling electrical blasts hot enough to melt ceramite, and capable of arcing between multiple targets.

These weapons caught the Kill-team entirely off-guard, as a single glancing hit on one Battle-Brother could prove lethal to another. This unexpected development nearly cost the mission, and it was only through the noble sacrifice of Brother Lars that the Immortals were defeated.

Immortals are similar in appearance to Necron Warriors, but with larger, broader bodies, and spines that jut grotesquely upward from their backs. These living metal bodies are stronger and more heavily armoured than those of Necron Warriors and even feature superior self-repair protocols.

Yet, Immortals also possess faster reflexes, and their movements are not so ungainly as Warriors. When combined with their potent skill in combat, this makes for a foe that can pose a grave threat to even a Deathwatch Kill-team.

Unlike Necron Warriors, Immortals are capable of independently reacting to shifts in battle, adapting their tactics accordingly. This means Immortals are much better suited to countering the unconventional tactics often employed by Deathwatch Kill-teams.

It even seems that Immortals are capable of issuing orders to Warriors, allowing a combined force to present a potent threat even when deprived of proper leadership. Still, Immortals must rely on ancient tactics and stratagems, and are little capable of true innovation.

Immortals can be deployed onto a battlefield by Night Scythe transports, providing their support where it is needed most.

Known Formations[]

Immortal Necron — A Necron Immortal confronts the foe with its powerful Gauss Blaster.

Resurrection War Cell - Necron stasis tombs seldom awaken of their own accord. They would lie dormant forever if not for the interfering delvings of other intelligent races, tectonic disturbances or the actions of Resurrection War Cells and the mysterious Necron Lords designated "Harbingers of Awakening." Once arisen from slumber, a Harbinger of Awakening has but one goal -- to journey the stars in search of Tomb Worlds not yet risen and return them to life. Buried within the Harbinger’s artificial cortex are all the encryptions and algorithms needed to make contact with a slumbering stasis tomb and bring it to ghastly life once again. Within hours of a Resurrection War Cell’s arrival on the planet, maintenance Canoptek Scarabs and Canoptek Spyders spur into ghastly activity, nursing the somnolent tomb into new wakefulness. Often a Tomb World will have become infested by other intelligent races; colonised, or perhaps warred over, by living creatures that remain ignorant of the millions of Necrons slumbering beneath their feet. The arrival of a Harbinger of Awakening and his Immortal bodyguard spells nothing less than a disaster for such a world. Faced with an alien incursion, a Harbinger directs every Spyder and Scarab within the tomb to drive the living from the area, so that the great awakening may begin in earnest and unopposed.

Wargear[]

Gauss Blaster - Gauss Weapons are the most common of all weaponry carried by the Necron soldiery and vary in appearance. Unlike more conventional directed energy weapons, a Gauss projector does not deliver a cutting beam of coherent subatomic particles or bolt of electromagnetic force. Instead, it emits a molecular disassembling beam, capable of reducing flesh, armour and bone to their constituent atoms. Necron Immortals commonly utilise the double-barrelled Gauss Blasters, though some may also be armed with a Tesla Carbine.
Tesla Carbine - A Tesla Weapon unleashes a bolt of living lightning that crackles from foe to foe after hitting its target, charring flesh and melting armour. Tesla bolts feed off the energy released by the destruction, and the lightning discharge becomes more furious with every fresh arc. These weapons have been named by the Imperium after the ancient Terran scientist Nikola Tesla, who was the first human known to experiment with this type of weapons technology, which was referred to colloquially as a "death ray." A Tesla Carbine is the weakest version of this weapon and is portable by elite infantry like the Necron Immortals.