Setting:Brighthammer 40,000/C'tan
The C'tan (Star Children or Star Gods) are among the first beings who came into existence after the birth of the universe. In their original form, they live as a parasitic silvery sheen of energy in the coronas of suns. In this form, they can barely be considered sapient; their mere residence in a sun renders planets orbiting it barren or twisted.
Residing on such a planet, the ancient Necrontyr managed to contact "their" Star God, which after two generations of conversations came to be fond of the "little carbonites" and voluntarily restricted his body to the part of the sun not facing their planet. The Necrontyr (while still not being the healthiest of races) rejoiced and built it a necrodermis body to interact with them. Countless pictures, reliefs, and statues depicting the moment the Daybringer talked face to face to a Necrontyr delegation have survived the eons.
Eventually finding and contacting more of its kind, the two races struck up an odd friendship and explored the galaxy together, eventually finding a long-term (but radical) solution to the Necrontyr's health problems in advanced technology. These times ended when the coalition met the terrible Great Old Ones, who forced them into a conflict that, through [[../Eldar|Eldar]] prose, remains known as the War in Heaven.
After losing the conflict, the Necrontyr were forcibly scattered and the C'tan retreated to lick their wounds. While most began hibernating to recover from their wounds, some took up a long-term vendetta, spreading the pariah gene across the galaxy in order to deny the Great Old Ones more worship/sacrifice fodder for their subservient [[../Warp Horrors|Warp Horrors]]. Other supported the fledgling Eldar/[[../Orks|Ork]] coalition during the War of Souls only to disappear into obscurity afterwards, possibly affected by the Universal Destroyer's near destruction of the Materium.
In modern times, most of the surviving Star Gods have come out of hibernation and gone back to eating stars, wanting nothing more to do with "carbonites". Not more than maybe two dozen still travel the void in their artificial bodies.
Active C'tan[edit]
The Daybringer[edit]
The first C'Tan to inhabit a necrodermis body, given as a gift by the ancient Necrontyr, the Daybringer acted as a general during the Wars of Heaven and Soul. Afterwards, he took up traveling with a Necrontyr cloisterworld, occasionally resting and snacking up on a sun. Easily the most worldly of the Star Gods, he is considered safe to approach and interact with.
The Void Dragon[edit]
A virtual machine deity, the Void Dragon is considered to be an inherent technomancer and psychometrist; able to communicate and control machines as if they were part of himself. After he took up residence on Mars for 10 millennia, the Dragon disappeared during the late Age of Strife. As he is more machine than mortal, his thought processes are completely alien and his gifts of knowledge are never less than dangerous to all but the most stalwart of mortal minds - not only were they responsible for the salvation of the Necrontyr, but also for the creation of the Golden Men and the ensuing millennia long war.
The Soothsayer[edit]
Possibly the most dangerous of the active C'Tan, the Soothsayer travels the galaxy in the guise of mortality, spreading the pariah gene and mixing up with unsuspecting folks. Speaking truths nobody wants heard and caring little for the feeling of others, chaos and war often follow in his wake as even the most little white lies are exposed as falsehoods.
The Outsider[edit]
A mighty warrior during the War of Souls, the Outsider was deeply scarred by that conflict and took to hiding himself in a Dyson sphere located almost outside of the galaxy, only emerging once every dozen millennia. Unremarkable (and probably safely locked away in his self-imposed exile) save for that fact that an incoming Tyranid Hive fleet will run straight into him. Nobody, not even his fellow Star Gods, know if and how the Outsider would react to that.