Orikan the Diviner
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"In regione caecorum rex est luscus (In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king.)"
- – Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia
Orikan the Diviner is one of the most powerful Crypteks in the entire Necron Empire. In particular, he is an astromancer, specializing in reading the future from the patterns and motions of the stars.
Lore[edit]
He is acknowledged as the very best in his field. Apparently, he was able to predict the Fall of the Eldar, the Horus Heresy, the Great Rift and the coming of the Tyranids sixty million years in advance, which gives him a massive ego. He was a member of the Silent King's court and the only one among the nobility who knew the C'tan's offer of robotizing the Necrons would have a steep cost. But Szarekh spurned his warning. If Orikan rejected the offer, then why is he a Necron, you ask? Because some Necron lords tracked him down and dragged him to the biotransference IN CHAINS. These incidents gave him a massive chip on his shoulder towards authority and made him refuse to serve any master but himself.
He has no respect for the nobles who hire him, but his reputation renders him effectively immune from punishment, because any Overlord who wishes to harm him is paralyzed by the thought that Orikan must have foreseen that sequence of events and taken steps to prevent it or take pre-emptive vengeance.
In reality, Orikan is not quite as good a forecaster as the Necron nobles think he is. He can predict events in more detail than any other astromancer, but even he makes mistakes. He makes up for this with his mastery of time travel -- if his prediction is erroneous, he either goes back in time and manipulates events to conform to the prediction (in spite of the unforseen events that this can bring about later) or tells his past self what will happen (as of 9th edition lore). However, this can risk causing a HUGE temporal paradox, and the universe is messed up enough as it is. Plus Chaos can mess with Orikan's predictions and the entities of the Warp can perceive time in a non-linear fashion, so he fears they'd come after him if he uses time travel against them too much. That said, ordinarily the degree to which daemons or beings of the warp can interfere with Necron affairs is pretty limited, and usually always indirect, but they can at least muddy the waters enough to add an awful lot of uncertainty to any divinations, making Orikan's job much harder. And if he uses time travel enough, it does fray the fabric of reality and make daemonic incursions more likely at that location.
It is clear that despite his arrogance he is aware that even someone like him is powerless and weak in the Universe, being afraid of both the C'tan and the Chaos Gods. Slaanesh's awakening mentally scarred Orikan so much he had to isolate and meditate for a hundred years to get over it, and as a Necron he only felt a small portion of what the Eldar can feel from the massive Warp disturbance. When Trazyn was about to free a shard of the Deceiver, Orikan was so desperate to stop Trazyn that, despite his hatred of Trazyn and issues with authority, he surrendered and offered to pledge himself to Trazyn's service if Trazyn didn't open the shard prison.
He and Trazyn have something of a history, even before Bio-Transference (according to Orikan, Trazyn was one of the Necrons who forced him into it, although the implication is that this memory was tampered by Mephet'ran to aggravate their enmity). In life they often clashed due to their opposing fields of interest. As Necrons, the pair have spent several millennia dicking each other over; dragging each other into frivolous court cases, staging proxy wars for shits and giggles, and both being manipulated into almost releasing several shards of the Deceiver. Whilst they still very much hate each other, both admit that they are as close to peers as they are likely to find.
Tabletop[edit]
Orikan's big plan is to somehow harness the power of the alignment of the stars in the indeterminate future. Instead of reversing biotransference and reverting to a fleshy body like everyone else wants to, Orikan intends to transcend necrodermis and become a being of pure energy, blazing the trail for a new kind of Necron. He has a chance of doing this in miniature during games of Warhammer 40,000 with a special rule called "The Stars Are Right" (feel free to make Cthulhu jokes as desired). He gains a hefty stat boost (WS/BS2+, S/T7, A4) if you roll equal to or under the current turn number (and he no longer reverts if this roll succeeds again). For maximum nostalgia, go full Mumm-Ra and "invoke the ancient spirits of evil" whenever you roll that die (the original rule actually included evil laughter: "Bwahahaha!").
Orikan's philosophy and goal for the Necron race is to be like the C'tan. He has complete disregard for the necron nobility due to their small minded petty feuds over the material when he's focused on their energy form. Or maybe Orikan Empowered is just the Necron equivalent of Daemon Princedom. Or maybe he's really Dio. But probably not, he’s likely just a dick as seen in the Infinite and the Divine. But a powerful one. As a nod to the statline, at the climax of the book he achieves maximum power and temporarily becomes something very similar to a C’tan, appetite and godlike contempt for all life included.
The general concept of the Necron is a melding of energy form and material. They're literally ghosts in a machine, a program containing altered memories of a Necrontyr printed into circuitry and a necrodermis. What is a C'tan but an energy form with full control over it's necrodermis and a bad attitude?
But, that's not all. Here are his stats for 9e.
Orikan the Diviner is a single model equipped with the Staff of Tomorrow.
| Name | M | WS | BS | S | T | W | A | Ld | Sv | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orikan the Diviner | 5" | 3+ | 3+ | 4 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 10 | 4+ | 110 pts. |
| Orikan Empowered | 5" | 2+ | 2+ | 7 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 10 | 4+ |
| Weapon | S | AP | D | Abilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Staff of Tomorrow | User | -3 | D3 | Each time an attack is made with this weapon, invulns cannot be used. |
Master Chronomancer: It's the same thing as a Chronometron, but it can be used on any Necrons unit, not just units of the same dynasty. Gives any Necrons unit (even a Lord of War like a Monolith) a 5++ and the ability to reroll charges.
Prescient Strike: At the start of the Fight phase, if the Diviner is in combat, he fights first.
Timesplinter Mantle: 4+ invuln. Nothing special.
The Stars Are Right: In your command phase, if Orikan's still alive, roll a d6. If the result is less than the battle round number (on BR3, this succeeds on a 1 or 2), Orikan becomes empowered- use the Orikan Empowered profile for the rest of the game.
His warlord trait is Immortal Pride. This gives the Diviner a 5+++ against mortal wounds, and any Core unit within 6" of him can ignore any or all modifiers to Combat Attrition..