Pylar Dynasty
Summary:
The Pylar are a Dynasty of the former Necrontyr, located within an isolated system of space. Their lust for precious metals is only matched by their desire to escape and reclaim the Subsector once more.
The Pylar are a Dynasty of the former Necrontyr, located within an isolated system of space. Their lust for precious metals is only matched by their desire to escape and reclaim the Subsector once more.
History:
Long ago, before history was ever recorded by human hands, there were three races that first dominated the galaxy; the enigmatic Old Ones, who were the first sentient life to have ever existed and discovered the secrets to immortal life. The decadent and proud Eldar, the weight of their sins one day birthing the very God of debauchery. The third were the Necrontyr, a short lived race that comes from the area of known space known as the Halo Stars. Their homeworld was an irradiated, blighted thing, ravaged by ionizing solar winds and intense radiation storms, and this world would shape the Necrontyr. Bitter, brief lives ravaged by cancers and hardship, it is a telling thing that the greatest monuments that the Necrontyr ever built were not for their living, but for the dead.
Because of a lifespan that was briefer than a human's own before the advent of modern medicine, the Necrontyr advanced swiftly in terms of science and academia. Their slow burning lives led to the advent of stasis crypts and slow-moving antimatter torch ships that would allow a race that had not mastered Warp travel to colonize far beyond the reach of their homeworld's cruel, burning star.
When the Necrontyr came upon the world of Rakahet in what is now the Segmentum Obscurus, it was seen as an advent of good fortune. The world was rich in minerals; gold, silver, platinum - the dynasty that had laid claim to the world would have wealth beyond measure. So it was that the seat of the Pylar Dynasty was founded, and the Crown World of Rakahet-Kal was founded in honor of the first Phaeron of the Dynasty, Kaltokemeht.
Though these Necrontyr had escaped the bonds of their homeworld, millennia of exposure to the horrid radiation ensured that the lives of even these colonists were brutal, short, and hard. While the grand majority of the Necrontyr had allowed this to paint their mindset with nihilism, the material wealth that was granted to the Pylar Dynasty affected them as it would any other sentient race. Greed took root in the royalty and elite of Pylar society, allowing them to make grand, sprawling urbanized tomb colonies that were not built in honor of the fallen dead, but in honor of themselves. The common Necrontyr, those that were not part of the first families to stake claims in the great metal mines of the Crown World, lived little better than slaves, dressed in rags and tatters. Everything that was taught to the common man was that their lives were short, and so they should spend it in service of their betters. Advancement in this dynasty was impossible; even if a slave showed merit beyond their station, they would die a slave. The slaves were not even given wages with which they might be able to buy their freedom; a brutal taxation system ensured that the slaves and peasants would never advanced, and the briefness of Necrontyr lives ensured that no major rebellions would be launched – why would one spend years of their lives fighting, only to die a short time later?
The royalty, meanwhile, had taken to wealth as a horse takes to water. Grand monoliths were erected for every noble on the planet, and around these monoliths, the slave ghettos and marketplaces would spring up around them, becoming de-facto "cities" that were barely miles apart. Statues of every Phaeron and Nemesor were carved into the great canyons of Rakahet-Kal, the most intact is named "The Gorge of Szormerh" after Kaltokemeht's most trusted adviser.
Because their diseased flesh insulted the new-founded vanity of the Necrontyr nobility and royalty, they took to wearing masks and fullbody clothes to hide their cancerous appearance from each other, and from themselves. One's social rank was determined by the material of the mask a person wore; Phaerons were the only ones allowed to wear a mask made of platinum, embroidered with gold along the angles of the face, silver for their tongues, and copper for their eyes, to signify their dominance over the lesser ranks. Royalty, such as Lords, Crypteks, and even Nemesors, were given golden masks, each engraved with a symbol of office – two khopesh crossed over the other for Nemesors, a scarab for Lords, and differing symbols for the different Harbingers of Crypteks. Immortals, Lychguard, and Deathmark Assassins were given silver masks to wear (though in practice, the Deathmark had an unspoken exception to them, considering their profession, save for when they needed to be brought to the court of their Lord). Copper masks were given to the common soldiers and merchants – the soldiers engraved with a kopesh, and the merchants engraved with coin. Slaves were not allowed masks.
Things continued on this rigid, unchanging path of social malignancy for generations, until the birth of twin boys. One would become the last Phaeron of the Pylar Dynasty, and the other would become the greatest Harbinger of Transmogrification in the dynasty's history. Their names, Kar-Alarakh, The Reclaimer and Voygeran, Architect of Alchemy, would someday go down in the digitized records of their annals as peoples who would change their fortunes forever.
As with the rest of the Necrontyr people, all in the Pylar Dynasty walked through the ethereal forges of the C'tan, their flesh incinerated as their minds were implanted within eternal constructs of living metal. As part of the unified Necron Empire, they marched forward, Necrodermis replacing their frail bodies but their masks remaining as they were; reminding them of their role in the reborn Pylar Dynasty.
Soon after their rebirth, Kar-Alarakh and his dynasty became a fearsome force as one world after another was either reclaimed from their ancient enemy, the Eldar, or was utterly annihilated. Even in life, Kar-Alarakh was a brutal tyrant – faring no better in rebirth as he led, against the Eldar, one of the most destructive conquests the Pylar Dynasty knew. If a world was not reclaimed and soon subjugated by the Pylar, it was wiped clean of any and all life and blasted from beyond orbit; only to have countless enslaved Eldar to merely return to the blasted landscape to harvest the minerals of the world until death. For the sole purpose adorning himself, his lords, and even his most lowly of soldiers in the metals.
Voygeran, unlike his "twin brother" – if such a term still applied past the bio-transference, was a Cryptek first and foremost. He studied, researched, and even advanced the art of alchemy and transmogrification to the point where he could turn simply stone into a block of solid gold with a mere tune from his harp. Voygeran was still, by all rights, connected to Kar-Alarakh as this was painfully prevelent in his work. He could turn stone into incredibly precious alloys, however, he much prefered turning his foes into such things; later having them turned into masks that depict their final visage as they drew their dying breath.
When the Necrons faced their inevitable defeat, every dynasty was sent to sleep – and on the crownworld of Rakahet-Kal, the ruins of their ancient society was slowly covered by eons of dust storms that sent the detritus of their mining efforts across the entirety of the planet. Though scarcely a trace of their society remained, their tombs were still relatively maintained by the Canoptek they had artificed – and for millions of years, they slumbered.
Over time, access to the Rakahet system grew more and more scarce. A group of xenos of a race long forgotten claimed the planet as their home, using the ancient mining pits to acquire their necessary resources while unaware that their rightful owners rested beneath their feet. The unstable warp corridor to the system precluded exploration once the Imperium entered Subsector Scandivus, and to the knowledge of most of the galaxy, Rakahet-Kal was forgotten.
Until one day, approximately two hundred years prior to the present. None shall ever know what sparked their awakening – some rumor a gold filling in a tooth, others claim the metal itself spoke to its former masters. Whatever the reason, the Gilded Necrons awoke, terrorizing the xenos and eventually subjugating them as a work force, making them toil in the mines until the last of their kind was extinct. The Pylar Dynasty had reclaimed their Crown World – but a pathway to reclamation and conquest still remained enigmatic.
Any signs of easy travel out of the system were few and far between. The remnants of the Dolmen Gates that had once serviced the planet were lost to the eons of slumber and beyond repair. Any portal into the Webway was destroyed long ago – and only the smallest vessels remained with any sort of functional phase drive. They were, for all intents and purposes, trapped and were to never see the daylight of conquest again.
But like the galaxy at large, they will never stay that way. For in the ingrained programming within their autonomous minds, their lust for adorning their Necrodermis bodies with the precious metals they jealously loved in life is above all things sans a drive for creativity. The Crypteks will soon create a way to get off-world – and when they do, Kar-Alarakh will reclaim what was stolen from him by time and lead his dynasty to glories that no metal or gem could ever captivate.
With the Crown World cut off, most of the worlds of the Pylar Dynasty had slipped away from the reach of Kar-Alarakh, and the Lords of these tomb worlds left to their own devices to reclaiming their worlds and finding a means of re-connecting the lost worlds. Many Lords and tombs remain dormant, even more lost to the ravages of time, however with each passing day more and more arise. Lords across the sector awaken from the eons rest and devise their own means of reclaiming their world in the name of the Pylar Dynasty or, in rare occasions, these Lords have either grown jealous or abitious of Kar-Alarakh from their slumber and splinter from the old dynasty in this new age and begin their own campaign of reclamation under a new banner. One of the many Lords that still pledge their fealty to Kar-Alarakh is Ammokh, Lord of Jerena II(one of the moons orbiting Harena III). Ammokh is an ambitious but cunning individual, preferring quick and surgical strikes rather than drawn out and methodical engagements. He is often known for his ability to command even a single group of Deathmarks to victory. Ammokh, during the War in Heaven, was given the title "The Silent Doom" by the Eldar.
Long ago, before history was ever recorded by human hands, there were three races that first dominated the galaxy; the enigmatic Old Ones, who were the first sentient life to have ever existed and discovered the secrets to immortal life. The decadent and proud Eldar, the weight of their sins one day birthing the very God of debauchery. The third were the Necrontyr, a short lived race that comes from the area of known space known as the Halo Stars. Their homeworld was an irradiated, blighted thing, ravaged by ionizing solar winds and intense radiation storms, and this world would shape the Necrontyr. Bitter, brief lives ravaged by cancers and hardship, it is a telling thing that the greatest monuments that the Necrontyr ever built were not for their living, but for the dead.
Because of a lifespan that was briefer than a human's own before the advent of modern medicine, the Necrontyr advanced swiftly in terms of science and academia. Their slow burning lives led to the advent of stasis crypts and slow-moving antimatter torch ships that would allow a race that had not mastered Warp travel to colonize far beyond the reach of their homeworld's cruel, burning star.
When the Necrontyr came upon the world of Rakahet in what is now the Segmentum Obscurus, it was seen as an advent of good fortune. The world was rich in minerals; gold, silver, platinum - the dynasty that had laid claim to the world would have wealth beyond measure. So it was that the seat of the Pylar Dynasty was founded, and the Crown World of Rakahet-Kal was founded in honor of the first Phaeron of the Dynasty, Kaltokemeht.
Though these Necrontyr had escaped the bonds of their homeworld, millennia of exposure to the horrid radiation ensured that the lives of even these colonists were brutal, short, and hard. While the grand majority of the Necrontyr had allowed this to paint their mindset with nihilism, the material wealth that was granted to the Pylar Dynasty affected them as it would any other sentient race. Greed took root in the royalty and elite of Pylar society, allowing them to make grand, sprawling urbanized tomb colonies that were not built in honor of the fallen dead, but in honor of themselves. The common Necrontyr, those that were not part of the first families to stake claims in the great metal mines of the Crown World, lived little better than slaves, dressed in rags and tatters. Everything that was taught to the common man was that their lives were short, and so they should spend it in service of their betters. Advancement in this dynasty was impossible; even if a slave showed merit beyond their station, they would die a slave. The slaves were not even given wages with which they might be able to buy their freedom; a brutal taxation system ensured that the slaves and peasants would never advanced, and the briefness of Necrontyr lives ensured that no major rebellions would be launched – why would one spend years of their lives fighting, only to die a short time later?
The royalty, meanwhile, had taken to wealth as a horse takes to water. Grand monoliths were erected for every noble on the planet, and around these monoliths, the slave ghettos and marketplaces would spring up around them, becoming de-facto "cities" that were barely miles apart. Statues of every Phaeron and Nemesor were carved into the great canyons of Rakahet-Kal, the most intact is named "The Gorge of Szormerh" after Kaltokemeht's most trusted adviser.
Because their diseased flesh insulted the new-founded vanity of the Necrontyr nobility and royalty, they took to wearing masks and fullbody clothes to hide their cancerous appearance from each other, and from themselves. One's social rank was determined by the material of the mask a person wore; Phaerons were the only ones allowed to wear a mask made of platinum, embroidered with gold along the angles of the face, silver for their tongues, and copper for their eyes, to signify their dominance over the lesser ranks. Royalty, such as Lords, Crypteks, and even Nemesors, were given golden masks, each engraved with a symbol of office – two khopesh crossed over the other for Nemesors, a scarab for Lords, and differing symbols for the different Harbingers of Crypteks. Immortals, Lychguard, and Deathmark Assassins were given silver masks to wear (though in practice, the Deathmark had an unspoken exception to them, considering their profession, save for when they needed to be brought to the court of their Lord). Copper masks were given to the common soldiers and merchants – the soldiers engraved with a kopesh, and the merchants engraved with coin. Slaves were not allowed masks.
Things continued on this rigid, unchanging path of social malignancy for generations, until the birth of twin boys. One would become the last Phaeron of the Pylar Dynasty, and the other would become the greatest Harbinger of Transmogrification in the dynasty's history. Their names, Kar-Alarakh, The Reclaimer and Voygeran, Architect of Alchemy, would someday go down in the digitized records of their annals as peoples who would change their fortunes forever.
As with the rest of the Necrontyr people, all in the Pylar Dynasty walked through the ethereal forges of the C'tan, their flesh incinerated as their minds were implanted within eternal constructs of living metal. As part of the unified Necron Empire, they marched forward, Necrodermis replacing their frail bodies but their masks remaining as they were; reminding them of their role in the reborn Pylar Dynasty.
Soon after their rebirth, Kar-Alarakh and his dynasty became a fearsome force as one world after another was either reclaimed from their ancient enemy, the Eldar, or was utterly annihilated. Even in life, Kar-Alarakh was a brutal tyrant – faring no better in rebirth as he led, against the Eldar, one of the most destructive conquests the Pylar Dynasty knew. If a world was not reclaimed and soon subjugated by the Pylar, it was wiped clean of any and all life and blasted from beyond orbit; only to have countless enslaved Eldar to merely return to the blasted landscape to harvest the minerals of the world until death. For the sole purpose adorning himself, his lords, and even his most lowly of soldiers in the metals.
Voygeran, unlike his "twin brother" – if such a term still applied past the bio-transference, was a Cryptek first and foremost. He studied, researched, and even advanced the art of alchemy and transmogrification to the point where he could turn simply stone into a block of solid gold with a mere tune from his harp. Voygeran was still, by all rights, connected to Kar-Alarakh as this was painfully prevelent in his work. He could turn stone into incredibly precious alloys, however, he much prefered turning his foes into such things; later having them turned into masks that depict their final visage as they drew their dying breath.
When the Necrons faced their inevitable defeat, every dynasty was sent to sleep – and on the crownworld of Rakahet-Kal, the ruins of their ancient society was slowly covered by eons of dust storms that sent the detritus of their mining efforts across the entirety of the planet. Though scarcely a trace of their society remained, their tombs were still relatively maintained by the Canoptek they had artificed – and for millions of years, they slumbered.
Over time, access to the Rakahet system grew more and more scarce. A group of xenos of a race long forgotten claimed the planet as their home, using the ancient mining pits to acquire their necessary resources while unaware that their rightful owners rested beneath their feet. The unstable warp corridor to the system precluded exploration once the Imperium entered Subsector Scandivus, and to the knowledge of most of the galaxy, Rakahet-Kal was forgotten.
Until one day, approximately two hundred years prior to the present. None shall ever know what sparked their awakening – some rumor a gold filling in a tooth, others claim the metal itself spoke to its former masters. Whatever the reason, the Gilded Necrons awoke, terrorizing the xenos and eventually subjugating them as a work force, making them toil in the mines until the last of their kind was extinct. The Pylar Dynasty had reclaimed their Crown World – but a pathway to reclamation and conquest still remained enigmatic.
Any signs of easy travel out of the system were few and far between. The remnants of the Dolmen Gates that had once serviced the planet were lost to the eons of slumber and beyond repair. Any portal into the Webway was destroyed long ago – and only the smallest vessels remained with any sort of functional phase drive. They were, for all intents and purposes, trapped and were to never see the daylight of conquest again.
But like the galaxy at large, they will never stay that way. For in the ingrained programming within their autonomous minds, their lust for adorning their Necrodermis bodies with the precious metals they jealously loved in life is above all things sans a drive for creativity. The Crypteks will soon create a way to get off-world – and when they do, Kar-Alarakh will reclaim what was stolen from him by time and lead his dynasty to glories that no metal or gem could ever captivate.
With the Crown World cut off, most of the worlds of the Pylar Dynasty had slipped away from the reach of Kar-Alarakh, and the Lords of these tomb worlds left to their own devices to reclaiming their worlds and finding a means of re-connecting the lost worlds. Many Lords and tombs remain dormant, even more lost to the ravages of time, however with each passing day more and more arise. Lords across the sector awaken from the eons rest and devise their own means of reclaiming their world in the name of the Pylar Dynasty or, in rare occasions, these Lords have either grown jealous or abitious of Kar-Alarakh from their slumber and splinter from the old dynasty in this new age and begin their own campaign of reclamation under a new banner. One of the many Lords that still pledge their fealty to Kar-Alarakh is Ammokh, Lord of Jerena II(one of the moons orbiting Harena III). Ammokh is an ambitious but cunning individual, preferring quick and surgical strikes rather than drawn out and methodical engagements. He is often known for his ability to command even a single group of Deathmarks to victory. Ammokh, during the War in Heaven, was given the title "The Silent Doom" by the Eldar.
Forces:
Even though the Pylar Dynasty is broken, and it's world lost, these worlds and the Crown World itself still hold ancient artifacts and devastating engines of war ready to be used at the beck and call of their lords. The Crown World of Rakahet-Kal holds the bulk of the power of the Pylar Dynasty, Kar-Alarakh holding the planet in his grasp through the use of such weaponry as Doomsday Arks that can rip entire battalions apart in a single shot, Doom Scythes that can reap enemies from below and dogfight the fliers of those whom would oppose the dynasty, the Canoptek to repair and rip apart vehicles in a matter of minutes, and even the most deadly of war engines: a Tesseract Vault that holds a shard of Nyadra'zatha, The Burning One.
Most of the other worlds, however, do not have access to such powerful weaponry and war engines. They typical Lord on these worlds control standard Reclamation Legions of Tomb Blades, Warriors, Immortals, and some gifts bestowed upon them by their Overlords and Phaeron - such as Lychguard, Deathmarks, and other legionnaires to serve under the Lord. Some of the weapons of the Pylar resemble their old ways, even after both the changes of the body of their wielders, as their Hyperphase Swords appear like their ancient khopeshes. Crypteks, unlike the other legionnaires, choose whom they serve. Crypteks serving along side these Lords as advisors, or, reminders to whom they serve.
Even though the Pylar Dynasty is broken, and it's world lost, these worlds and the Crown World itself still hold ancient artifacts and devastating engines of war ready to be used at the beck and call of their lords. The Crown World of Rakahet-Kal holds the bulk of the power of the Pylar Dynasty, Kar-Alarakh holding the planet in his grasp through the use of such weaponry as Doomsday Arks that can rip entire battalions apart in a single shot, Doom Scythes that can reap enemies from below and dogfight the fliers of those whom would oppose the dynasty, the Canoptek to repair and rip apart vehicles in a matter of minutes, and even the most deadly of war engines: a Tesseract Vault that holds a shard of Nyadra'zatha, The Burning One.
Most of the other worlds, however, do not have access to such powerful weaponry and war engines. They typical Lord on these worlds control standard Reclamation Legions of Tomb Blades, Warriors, Immortals, and some gifts bestowed upon them by their Overlords and Phaeron - such as Lychguard, Deathmarks, and other legionnaires to serve under the Lord. Some of the weapons of the Pylar resemble their old ways, even after both the changes of the body of their wielders, as their Hyperphase Swords appear like their ancient khopeshes. Crypteks, unlike the other legionnaires, choose whom they serve. Crypteks serving along side these Lords as advisors, or, reminders to whom they serve.