[Narrative] The Great Dynastic Retcon of '25 | [Hobby] What We Do in the Summertime

As our previous transmissions have indicated, I'm having trouble firing my Narrative Forge at the moment. 

This never usually happens, I swear! It just transpires that I've made the schoolchild errors of tangling myself in continuity and setting self imposed rules on what does and doesn't "count" and, crucially, doubling up on story beats. (If I had a pound for every time one of my forces was reduced to the fag-end of a defeated evil, skulking around in a derelict spaceship, I could afford the beans with the little sausages in them. Funny that it's happened twice.)

Factor in my innate tendency to play the mooks in a narrative wargaming context (that forever GM energy coming through again), especially if I'm feeling outmatched (that "not very good at 40K" energy coming through again) and it becomes clear that I have a problem with being a deuteragonist. Who are My Dudes? What do they actually want?

I went back to brass takes and started working over the dynasty's fluff. It's been a long time coming, especially since I've realised I muffed the name. (Necron dynasties are named for their founding overlord, not their homeworld: I think I had some Dawn of Lore in my eye there.)

While I was poking through Lexicanum looking for inspiration, gaps in the existing material that I could spackle my way through, and an alternative to Kavadah in the far-flung Pariah Nexus, I found them.

The Nekthyst Dynasty. They're in the galactic west. They're near the "canonical" Firestorm. Their crownworld is a labyrinth of crypts arranged in a way that defies material navigation (and it's called Moebius, because of course it is). Their colours used to be gold and purple, but they went copper and black because they called for help and the Triarchate didn't answer and they've rejected nobility and protocol in favour of sulking for millennia.

What if... a splinter household from the Nekthyst wanted to make amends, take up the colours, be part of the Infinite Empire again? That's a faction that Wants Something, and has Something To Prove, and is Starting From Nothing. That's protagonism, baby! And since I've stumbled face first into their colourscheme, it feels very much like destiny.

Talking this through with m'colleague, it began to fit even more closely. Not only has Kopekh the Shrouded been vanquished by this interfering, shouting monkey-man wearing a bright red fridge, who needs to learn his place - but said Kopekh needs to defeat him honourably, to prove he's not just another Nekthyst mercenary with all the nobility of an unwashed weasel. Merely having the Deathmarks drill Captain Kaine a new and superfluous eye socket from a kilometer away won't do the job. It has to be by superior force of arms, or in a personal duel, or simply by outsmarting and outmaneuvering him. That's personal motivation.

Of course, this does mean Overlord Kopekh can't have died in the recent campaign. Instead, therefore, let miniature be the mother of invention. This is my new Overlord with Translocation Shroud:

 Observing the incomplete nature of his physical form, and all that swirling reconstitutive energy, and the funereal cross-armed pose: clearly he's come back wrong, the old resurrection protocol not quite firing fully in the haste to clear orbit and get away from his previous defeat. This is the source of some internal tension between him and his shipmaster, the Royal Warden Teznet the Loyal, who called the retreat ever so slightly too soon.

As a bonus, further research indicates a short story and three Boarding Action scenarios have been published in White Dwarf, starring a Chronomancer from said Nekthyst Dynasty. Guess what else I've painted up in the last fortnight?

I've also painted up another box of Warriors and Scarabs, in the same timeframe it takes to grunt out two Night Lords. This is another reason Necrons are my "proper army" army: they're a lot more accessible for speed painting and that's essential to hook my interest and Get Shit Done.

And finally, m'colleague has found time to repay the various basing services performed by painting up these wrecked vehicle parts on the Reanimator's base.

 

A productive silly season so far! Club is closed for the summer, and the light and humidity are both right for painting, so there'll be more of this and less of the dice rolling aspect until September or so. I have ten Lychguard and the Void Dragon left in the Necron queue, all the specialists for my Chaos Kill Teams, and the Goliath gang (who need priming). Busy busy.