Welcome back, dear reader, to the Adventures of Gunum, and my return to the 40k scene. I’ll be attending the Games Workshop Narrative Finale this weekend, and I cannot adequately explain how excited I am to get there. The nightmare of going through the college circuit once again has been weighing on me, but taking these past couple of days to entertain myself with things like “Crusade” and “learning what Power Level is” has been quite invigorating.
For those of you who care more about the lore of my army more than they care about my hobby progress or what I’ve been up to, you can skip to the end of this to the italicized section where I write a background from the point of view of my main character, Pyschomancer Gunum. (GUNUMNOTE: Yes, the name is spelled wrong on purpose)
Since you heard from me last, I was able to get in a practice game with a 100PL list. As a relatively new Necron player, I had been only indoctrinated to how good Necrons were by how strong their secondaries are in the GT circuit. Trying to play them in the narrative environment was incredibly different, especially just for a couple of Crusade games. What I learned very quickly is that the Necrons’ Power Level does not add up to their point values. I had met up with a good friend of mine, we will affectionately call him Hipster for now, and I learned that Tzeentch demons at 100PL were essentially a 2000-point list. My Necron list a 100PL, you might ask? A powerful 1780. I wanted to make a statement, by playing almost 300 points below what my opponent was playing.
This shivered every single timber in my skeleton body, so I decided to go back to the drawing board and dig through the Necron Codex. And what did I find? Well, a whole lot of things that weren’t very great. C’tans cost more than I could have imagined. Ghost arks? Forget about it. Lychguard? Who am I, Mr. Moneybags?! My father would be furious at me for the points that I was letting escape through the door of my office, as if I was trying to heat the Goonhammer offices like they were the neighborhood I grew up in.
So I buckled down. You could queue up a montage of the amount of work that I put in over the past week, especially focused around Tomb blade and a brand-new Doomsday Ark. Once again, the amazing product put forward by Turbo Dork was putting me through the wringer and upping my skill level as a painter. I would never consider myself any kind of artist, especially when I’m just a few doors down from the art studio that’s led by Rockfish. They always seem to be stealing my ideas, and it’s probably because of my loud, booming, bassy, attractive voice, constantly shouting about my ideas and how that’s inspiring them. My ego is huge, and my ideas are even huger, I won’t be restricted by something as simple as HR Wings’ noise policy, or Rob’s sign that he taps every time I come around that simply says “HMO: No.”
As you can see, the Tomb Blades were a raging success and it only helped reinforce that I was making the right decision. Changing my list to help optimize for Power Level ended up cementing this game type for me. I went from fielding lists that were filling 100PL at 1750 points, to 2000 points. Then I was looking at the list, and it was suddenly over 2000 points, still at 100 Power. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. This was everything I needed. I didn’t want to go to this event and feel like I was playing so far behind that I didn’t have a chance. Nobody wants to play 300 points down, especially an event that we’re excited for as an entire group.
My paint scheme is built around using the Turbo Dork Radium and Crystal Cavern paints, and I’ve never been so happy with a paint scheme, or so pleased with a narrative lure that I was able to summon this kind of creativity, and I cannot wait to introduce everyone to my irritated, bloody, buddies.
If, dear reader, you see a tired-looking man who seems out of his element in the warm New Mexico weather, huddled in a hoodie, hiding from the sun: say hi to him, because that person is probably me. I come from the greater Northern Midwest, and I am looking forward to getting out of here for a little while, as it has just snowed about 5 inches. I’m hoping that the change of climate will only increase my odds of performing well for my faction, the interlopers of Battle Group 16, shout out to y’all, let’s give um hell.
I’ll be writing a wrap-up for my adventures there, that’s probably the next time you’ll hear from me. We are loaded with content this week and I cannot wait to tell you guys about my adventures and brag about my murder robots a little bit more.
Enjoy my attempt at lore. Or don’t. I don’t care.
I care so much.
The circulatory system of many biological species shares fundamental commonalities with the generation of electricity. The heart, like a rotating magnet inside a copper coil, pushes blood like electrons through a copper wire. The heart is a power plant, pushing current through the wire-like avenues of arteries and veins to sustain the systems of the greater whole. Blood pressure is its voltage, vascular resistance its Ohms. This is not a coincidence, but a grand design that illuminates a fundamental truth of the universe. There is power in the blood.
This is a truth the others in my order cannot comprehend, though the dynasty of the Novakh has come closest. Their crude blood rituals draw them towards a deeper understanding, but they lack the clarity of vision to unlock the full potential of this idea. Such a vision has afforded me a different viewpoint on the gifts bestowed upon us by our benefactors, the C’tan, during the war that will never be forgotten. They knew the truth. There was power in the blood; Power in the spirit.
Every cycle, we see sacrifices being practiced by those primitive races who follow a corpse, or worship mad gods who toy with their every move. Blood and spirit were sacrificed in the quest for greater power. We were given undying bodies, self-repairing flesh, generators for hearts, and circuitry for our veins, but what has that led us to? The bodies we sacrificed were meant to push us toward a greater destiny, yet upstart vermin now stand over the bones of our empire. In their blind fumbling, have they stumbled across the secret we cast away? There is power in the blood.
Before I followed Tarek into the great sleep, our dynasty was already experimenting with the idea that what was inside the shells of our skin, the thing that the C’tan coveted, was the key to our salvation. As we stepped into the giant machines, to be blessed with our new weapons and self-repairing prisons, the other Crypteks and I began to question the purpose of our sacrifice. As the only Psychomancer in the dynasty, I began to suspect that there was something more sinister ahead of us. Something was being held back, and would keep us from reaching our full potential as a species.
After the great deed was done and our Overlord led us into the great resting halls, we Crypteks decided to share our minds amongst each other, so that we wouldn’t completely forget what had happened in the past, on the distant day we were awakened. I was the first of the Hemotoxin dynasty to awake, on Throne World Vitis. The only thing that I could truly remember was that there was power in the blood.
I summoned my thralls. I marshalled my forces. I gathered my dynasty. We marched on the species that decided to call our home theirs. I can hardly remember what they looked like anymore, but the one thing I remember clearly from that time of distant and bloody dream was that their eyes shone like sapphires. The color of their energy was in incredible contrast with those eyes, ruby red complimenting the haunting blue. As my Canoptek creations continued to fall around me, protecting me from the striking beams of red, I replaced their damaged generators with the generators from the interloper’s chests. There was power in the blood.
After the area around our throne had been cleared, I began to reach out to others who might share the same spark of sentience that I retained after the great sleep. I only found the soulless husks of warriors, broken down and unempowered. Using what I had learned from my earlier skirmishes, I began to use my new generators, plugging them into my warriors. Upon their awakening, I found that they were not behaving as I had expected. Their command protocols were still locked, by some other force. It was then that realized that Tarek still lived. It was clear he still slept, as my attempts to contact him through standard communication protocols were unsuccessful. So I hunted him down in his great chamber, the Canoptic creatures parting before me, almost inviting me towards my sinister designs. The dynasty must survive. Power is needed to survive. There was power in the blood.
An Overlord is a completely different order of mechanical artistry than Canoptek servants or a mere Warrior. Finding the right configuration to match the Overlord with my new, flesh-like generators required the experimentation and dissection of about a legion’s worth of Warriors to get right. As shameful as it was necessary, I even had to break into some of our more useful Immortals casks and attempt more complicated hardwiring before even attempting the procedure on our Overlord. The command protocols were strong and reinforced by Technomancer E’lyc, my rival in the Advisors Circle. Though it was an effort, I was able to install the needed overrides and glean the insights I needed to break into the Overlord’s mind.
Once my Overlord awoke, he said nothing, standing at attention like a Warrior. I was able to see that I was the one in control. My commands were absolute. After I gave them, Tarek himself would repeat them as though they were his idea. What astounded me even more, as I watched his new generator leaking energy all over the floor, is he paid absolutely no mind to the odd crimson trailing from his body. The Overlord pushed forward with my commands, now acting independently but still towards my goals.
So did Tarek the Jade Herald become Tarek the Silent Puppet. There was power in the blood.
With the Overlord under my sway, I was able to bend the Warriors, the Immortals, the Lychguard – all the forces of the dynasty – to my goals. I made certain to avoid awakening any other Cryptek at this time, as I needed to make sure that my entire process was perfected before they, too, could join their Overlord in subservience.
It was not long before we had harvested all the other generators on the planet and were able to fully fuel our home with the same power that the C’tan so deeply craved. There was power in the blood.
Next, I turned the bloody eye of our dynasty outward, bringing the entire system to heel. A fresh batch of generators, and generator factories, were harvested from planets that had once been called ‘Pleasure Worlds’. Soon, enough energy had been spilled in our system to power the needs of our reemerging dynasty, but to fight against the Silent King, and other sorts of heretics who didn’t understand where we drew our newfound strength, we would need to find more generators. We would need to find more power.
An Aeldari Corsair had put out a call for assistance in a system that was not far from our home, a system called Szabryne. Here we would find victory. Here would we find a place for the Hemocan Dynasty to prove its worth and bring the knowledge they had earned: that there was another way to power for the Necron race.
My name is Pyschomancer Gunum. This record will serve as a testament for others in my school to learn from. To expand their minds and limitations when it comes to keeping our dynasties alive. I will be exiled for this. I welcome it. There is power in the blood.
Ok, well, thanks for that one Gunum. Only a little creepy to read about blood-powered robot skeletons this early in the morning. I hope you crush all opposition this weekend, but also if you want to go back to a normal Hear Me Out format instead of making me read about a machine army that runs off of heart meat, that’d be fine too.
