C'tan

The C'tan are ancient and powerful Star Gods given physical bodies by the ancient Necrontyr. They are supposedly the spirits of dead stars or something like that, and are often called Star Vampires due to their feeding habits, as they are capable of 'nomming entire stars with ease. Their vast power, however, is limited to the Materium; the Warp is anathema to them, as they cannot control or enter it, and being big babies decided if they can't play in Hyperspace-Hell nobody can. Before the concept was retconned, the C'tan tampered with humanity to inject the anti-psyker Pariah gene and probably built the Cadian Pylons that created the Cadian gate by forming a bubble of normality that cuts into the Eye of Terror. In 4th edition they were responsible for massive amounts of just as planned.

And now they are shards.

History

The first C'tan was found "sucking" the energies of the Necrontyr planet's sun, the same sun that gave off enough hard radiation to make proto-Necrontyr life short, nasty, short, brutish, and short.

The Necrontyr formed a necrodermis body and coaxed the star-sucker to inhabit it. This C'tan was later named The Nightbringer. When the Nightbringer awoke in the new body, it noticed the Necrontyr for the first time and discovered they were like Chinese take-out: really yummy and spicy, more so than bland stars, but you could eat a few thousand and still feel hungry an hour later. It took a while and much slaughter before the Necrontyr could convince the Nightbringer that they were more useful in servitude, and there were other yummy lifeforces to be eaten out there.

Other C'tan gods were discovered feeding on stars, but the most significant of these was named The Deceiver. Weaker than the others, The Deceiver is better at leveraging other entities to do what it wants. After inhabiting a necrodermis body, it adapted to the material world quickly and became very popular with the Necrontyr by means of cunning and guile - mind you, he probably didn't go around calling himself "the Deceiver" at this time. It was The Deceiver that convinced the Necrontyr they could escape their short lifespans and succeed in their battles against Old Ones by inhabiting necrodermis bodies themselves. The Deceiver neglected to mention that these new Necrons would be insensate, dull-witted and easily manipulated by the C'tan.

During the Necrons' war against the Old Ones, the C'tan also fought amongst themselves, destroying the necrodermis bodies they used to have an effect on the material world. After the Old Ones were rendered extinct, Necrons turned on few survived and weakened C'tan, and teared them into bajillion of shards which they then imprisoned into tesseract labyrinths. While those shards are like nine million times weaker then full-strength C'tan, they are still rape machines of death and destruction, and some of Necron Overlords are arrogant enough to release them on their enemies like a giant grimdark pokemons. Still some of the shards managed to escape and even merge to regain part of their godlike power, some can even have their own mindless Necron slaves to justify some of the old fluff. Of course, the final goal of each unchained shard is to free all other shards of his kind and merge with them to form a god of pure murder and rape, capable of tearing apart entire sectors single-handedly. Though the Necrons are ever vigilant and constantly hunting the escaped shards down.

tl/dr: They where once energy based race of star-vampires, then turned into metal gods of death, then turned into slave warriors and hunted runaways in seek of regaining former glory. Oh, how the mighty fall...

Some have, for varying reasons, considered the C'tan to have been gratuitously shoehorned into the setting, and claim that with the 5th edition they were put in their place. Make of that as you will.

Known C'tan

Aza'Gorod, The Nightbringer

Here to fuck your shit up. The first C'tan revealed to inhabit realspace. Scared the crap out of a race/culture that was a threat to the race/culture that created all the other races in WH40K. Likes killing, killing and, well, killing. In short: batshit insane though in a different way than the Outsider. Ate most of the other C'tan along with the Outsider, though he was convinced into doing so by the Deceiver while the Outsider was convinced by Cegorach, and is therefore known among his brethren as a team killing fucktard. Pretty much a giant, mechanical, space Grim Reaper that shoots lightning. He once battled the Eldar war God: Khaela Mensha Khaine and lost, where he was subsequently imprisoned for millennia.

He was freed by Uriel Ventris and the Ultramarine 4th company. And yes, that does mean the Ultrasmurfs have fucked over the entire galaxy on a scale not seen since the Eldar sexed Slaanesh into existence, but lets not get into that. The (Intelligent) Necrons under his authority tend to be the "silent, kill-every-living-thing" type with all the subtlety of an Angry Marine. In fact, they hate life so much that even bacteria and microbes must be purged from any active Tomb World they inhabit.

For emphasis on how badly they fucked up. There's a reason that humans, and most other sapient species in the galaxy, think of a humanoid covered in a black robe, wielding a scythe as the personification of death (Ok that's not true, the grim reaper only showed up 15th century at all but let's pretend it is). It's this guy. That's right, he killed so many beings during the War in heaven that species that had yet to evolve would remember him as death incarnate. (However, several human cultures have different appearances for their personification of death from the scythe-wielding robed guy. Then again, can't the C'tan shapeshift?)

And, on a sidenote, the edit squabbles between the necron-affiliated neckbeards and the Chaos-affiliated neckbeards over what basically amounted to a "who would win in a fight?" discussion about him and Khorne was hilarious for the unaffiliated to watch.

More squabbling:

For as we all know, Khorne and the Nightbringer are bros 4 lyfe. And also that the Nightbringer was raped by Khaine who was in turn raped by Slaanesh who in turn is continuously beaten up by Khorne. So yeah. But even this is rendered moot, as the Chaos Gods cant leave the Realm of Fucking Shit Up and the C'Tan cant enter the aforementioned Realm of Fucking Shit Up under the severe risk of metaphorical energy sunburn.

Khaine, did no raping, got lucky as fuck with a random thrust of his damn special sword,(might've been his spear, don't totally recall wtf he was using) thanks to an always interfering Laughing god/Deceiver(debatable). Nightbringer was using Khaine as a fucking play thing, and when finally got bored and decided to kill the fuck, Khaine all of a sudden remembers what the Laughing god said to him about the Nightbringer becoming vulnerable when he materializes. When said blow was struck anyhow, all it did was result in seriously pissing off the Nightbringer. Which, in fact, ingrained the fear of death in all the races today and forever fucking with the Eldar. (excluding Orks, the hardened, big ass fucks they are.)

When the Nightbringer was a model on the tabletop, he was the hardest thing to kill outside of Apocalypse with toughness 8, five wounds, and 4+ invulv save. As a monstrous creature with S10 and attacks, apart Abaddon, Mephiston, or the Swarmlord, getting near was a death sentence. However, he is, to date, the most expensive model, points-wise, to field in the tabletop game. The Nightbringer also appear in Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade, sorta. The Necron Lord had the ability to turn into a manifestation of the Nightbringer, which skyrocketed his DPS (not as much as what Relic units had, but still high), but more importantly, was INVINCIBLE while the ability was active, meaning the best an opponent could do was hold it place with a bunch infantry till it wore off and hope it didn't kill anything too valuable.

Mephet'ran, The Deceiver

Mass dickery on a galactic scale that only Tzeentch could rival. Got the bright idea of convincing the Necrontyr to turn themselves into the zombie-mummy-skeleton-robots known as Necrons. Rumored to have implanted the Pariah Gene into humans to help combat the forces of the Warp. Spends his days taking part in "Just as planned" contests with Tzeentch, The Empra and Cegorach the Laughing God, which no one really wins in the end as everything they do results in a paradox. The Eldar refer to the Deceiver as "The Jackal God", because they apparently had jackals in outer space millions of years ago, and just happened to identify them with the exact same trickster label we did (Or maybe it's a "meaning" translation); The Necrontyrs, however, called him Mephet'Ran, or "the messenger", making him the necrontyr equivalent of Hermes or Thot, hence his golden six-pack (or Nyarlathotep, hence his rampant douchebaggery). The (Intelligent) Necrons under his command tend to be sneaky and manipulative bastards with many of the Necron Lords under his command occupying many important positions in the Imperium of man and are the type of Necrons most likely to stop and chat with you, second most common type. One of them infiltrated the Inquisition and set himself up as Inquisitor Raleigh of the Ordos Xenos in Xenology as part of a plot to learn humanity's greatest weakness, which turned out to be knowledge since humans are insatiably curious fucks which isn't actually that far from the truth. The Deceiver may have given Failbaddon his beloved daemon sword Drach'nyen in an almost-Tzeentchian scheme. This would, as stated above, make Abaddon too powerful to be killed and replaced as Warmaster, and therefore ensure that only Abaddon (and his massive degrees of incompetence) would ever be at the head of the Traitor Legions. In the old fluff, it is confirmed that the Deceiver DID give the armless Despoiler two Blackstone Fortresses (gigantic Edlar spaceships that can destroy stars and can possibly kill an unsharded, weaker C'tan). This more than anything is what has probably kept Abaddon in power.

Little known fact is that The Man With No Name was the Deceiver. Seriously.

When The Deceiver was a model, he was bit weaker in combat than the Nightbringer, but still deadly. Rather than getting into melee, however, his abilities were based on a bunch illusion tricks that fucked with the enemies' heads, like forcing them to take a pinning test even if they were fearless. Similar to the Nightbringer, the Necron Lord in Soulstorm can turn into a manifestation of the Deceiver. It couldn't dish out nearly as much damage as the Nightbringer, but was still invincible and could do a bunch decieve-y stuff like temporarily take control of an enemy squad or create a fake monolith. The ability shared cooldown timers with the Nightbringer ability, but was considered overpowered regardless.

Mag'ladroth The Void Dragon

The Void Dragon can exert control over any machine, making him the most influential C'tan when at full power. It has been theorized that the Emperor battled the Void Dragon and successfully managed to put it to sleep under Mars. He didn't intend to kill the Dragon, instead using its influence to give humanity mastery over machines. Extended from this theory, it is believed by some that the Omnissiah fervently worshipped by the Adeptus Mechanicus is actually the Void Dragon, as he's supposedly the entity that makes the ramshackle excuse for technology the Imperium has to work properly. There's also an Eldar legend of their forge god Vaul failing to destroy the Dragon, only managing to force its hibernation in the so-called "Vaul Moon," although that could, in fact, be Mars itself. In case you're wondering how powerful he is, note that he was once shot at by multiple Blackstone Fortresses simultaneously (keeping in mind that even a single Blackstone Fortress can destroy a planet Death Star-style); all this managed to do was make him sleepy. Vaul, meanwhile, allegedly attacked the Dragon with an army at his back and was never heard from again. This is probably the only reason the Emperor was able to defeat the Dragon; it was just tired fro- *BLAM!* HERESY! In short, powerful as FUCK. The Necrons under his command are probably massive technophiles with a raging hard-on for machines....then again, they're already machines, so that would be expected, but they're probably even bigger technophiles than their fellows and emphasize their mechanicalness over their undeadness.

For some reason, it can talk to human children, like Gamera, and sometimes involuntarily gives them power to heal and manipulate machinery like him.

If this asshole were to ever wake up, the Imperium would go to shit within minutes. Mars would die, Terra would die, Empy would die *BLAM!* HERESY! THE EMPRAH IS A GOD, HE CAN NEVER DIE, the Astronomican would die, and the entire Imperium would no longer be capable of FTL and any form of communication as a result. In short, sitting ducks.

If you want to play him in an army, simply buy a Balrog or a Daemon Prince (make sure to give the latter wings), paint it suitably black, silver and green, and take Transdimensional Thunderbolt and any other power that sounds like it screws with reality. Have fun.

Tsara'noga, The Outsider

Ate at the same C'tan-cannibalism salad bar as The Nightbringer but did so due to the Dickery of Cegorach the Laughing God instead of the dickery of the Deceiver, but feels bad about it; blames Eldar gods for his bad eating habits. Decided to say "screw you guys, I'm taking my ball and leaving," and currently lives in a Dyson sphere outside the galaxy. A hive fleet of Tyranids decided to go AROUND this place, not just ignore it like Tyranids do with Necron tomb-worlds. Were the Tyranids scared? Dunno, it's safer to lick a bandsaw than stop to ask a tyranid. Other beings prefer to blow their own brains out rather then look at the Outsider when he's in town. Grimdark. The (intelligent) Necrons under his command are probably batshit insane.

Nyadra'zatha, The Burning One

Or Nyadra'Zatha. This guy came up with the idea of using the Dolmen Gates to enter the Webway; It gave the necrons the opportunity to go troll the Old Ones on their own field and allowed him to go wreck shit there, because he was a pyromaniac asshole. He was implemented into the fluff to give a bit more background to the "Lord of Fire" ability, but mostly to let neckbeards speculate and rage about him being/not being Khaine. No matter how unlikely it is, you should, however, use an Avatar miniature to represent your C'tan shard with LoF and troll the fuck out of your eldar opponent as his Fire Dragon exarch sees his own weapon blow up his face.

Iash'uddra, The Endless Swarm

Nothing more is known about this guy beyond his name. Contrary to some fa/tg/uys belief, he is not a reference to Tau Quest, but rather to the old fan theory in which the Tyranids were led by a C'tan. Again, GW is actively trying to make us argue and fanwank, the trollan fucks.

Llandu'gor, The Flayer

Llandu'Gor is the responsible for the apparition of Flayed Ones. The necrons sharded him too hard, but he managed to infect thousands of necrons with his hunger as a final dick move, turning them into warped ghouls with a gore fetish and teleportation powers. Which basically means that he has millions of necrons under his influence, and that this number is continuously growing, because the Flayer Curse is contagious.

Gallery

If someone actually fields these miniatures on the table, you're getting screwed. Unless you manage to bring up an equivalent (or play dark eldar, in which case it falls to two Venoms), in which case, get some Meatbread and enjoy yourself!

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  The Nightbringer

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  GOLDEN SIXPACK

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  If only Forgeworld would hurry up and give the Necrons a Titan sized C'tan

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  Too literal? NOT LITERAL ENOUGH!

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  You can't spell "reap" without RAEP

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  For those of us stuck in the past Crypteks might as well be Dragoncrons.