Ocoth: A Different Kind of Necron

Over the last few weeks I've been entertaining some new ideas for the 40k universe, taking a lot of the existing races and applying original ideas to them, discarding parts I don't have a use for and injecting original material I like the look and feel of. This has resulted in some rather different races and factions from the usual.

One of the most prominent of these were the Necrons, even more so of late as the new Necron codex and models are being released. I took the essential idea of "death robots" and ran with it, going goth metal with the concept and giving them a new aesthetic and history. By the time I was done, my changes were so extensive it only seemed natural to give this new faction their own name and identity as an independent race; and so, the Ocoth came to be.

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The wailing child that has been newly birthed, the proud and able man who walks tall in the warm sunlight, and the weary greybeard who hobbles hunched with time; the newborn species that has only begun to walk upright, the burgeoning empire that roils with growing pains, and the rotting civilization that languors with ancient years.

All writhe in the agony of having ever been born. Every living thing is damned by a beating heart to know a hopeless life of sorrowed suffering, and a world without hope is already dead. Every living thing is a rankling concretion upon the harrowed flesh of a thrashing universe, the tortured, murderous fury of war the twitching of its bleeding carcass as it strains in vain to kill itself.

We mourn the misbegotten universe, its silent cries for release unheard. Oh, that our eyes were rivers of water, that we could weep for you, but that the oceans of a hundred worlds could not find the tears. Lie still, for soon the pain will end. Lie still and know peace at last.

In ancient times, the beings now known as the Ocoth were the mechanical soldiers of a long-dead interplanetary empire, sentient robots created for the sole purpose of fighting that empire's enemies across space. The Ocoth were exposed to eons of terrible warfare across hundreds of worlds, seeing all its atrocities and horrors, witnessing the cruelty each living race was willing to inflict on another for its own gain. With time, they became embittered and despairing, lamenting the abject suffering of all their conquered worlds and the death and destruction they were forced to spread, and that inflicted on one another by thousands of other species.

Eventually, this sorrow crystallized into a powerful belief; life was devoid of hope or meaning, full of violence, sorrow, murder and pain. Only in death was there true peace. Overcome with compassion for other lifeforms, they turned against their creators and shattered the empire they had been created to serve from within.

The Ocoth abandoned the terror weapons their masters had equipped them with, taking up vaporizing nuclear concussor weaponry that could kill instantly and without pain. They began to make their way across the worlds within the empire's territories, putting down all living things to save them from the suffering of being alive in an uncaring universe.

The modern Ocoth army is composed almost entirely of soulless robots, manufactured by their fellow Ocoth to replace those who had been destroyed in battle over the ages, designed with only the basic AI needed for combat and incapable of thought or feeling. Of the entire force labeled "Ocoth" by the Imperium, only about 1% are actually sentient, these now being the Ocotharchs who lead their mindless robot armies to euthanize a galaxy in agony.

As time has passed into the age of the Imperium, the Ocoth have developed various methods and rituals for their euthanasic mission. When a planet has been cleared of all intelligent life, a great funeral service is held on the surface by the commanding Ocotharch and any others with him, mourning the lives and deaths of the population and of the world itself. Following this somber rite, builder drones begin constructing vast columns of black metal several kilometers in height; each pillar is adorned with solemn statuary of cloaked skeletons, weeping fountains built into the empty eye sockets, tall black bells attached to their arms and sides to chime miserably in the dying wind. Upon the very tops of these grim effigies are constructed the foundations of a low-orbit Dyson sphere, a global casket which will bury the planet and starve its ecosystem of light, dooming all indigenous lifeforms from animals and plants down to bacteria to slowly die out. When the worldwide coffin is complete, mining bases on its interior surface begin gravitationally extracting minerals and other materials from the planet, slowly "rotting" it and providing the materials needed by the factories on the exterior surface to manufacture new robot soldiers and battleships. From there, new planets are chosen to be purged and transformed into Ocoth grave-worlds.

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These ideas can be used on their own as an original race, or be applied to the Necrons as they are-- either one is a good fit. As time goes on and I think this all over more, I plan to produce more exact unit lists for weaponry, armor, infantry and ships.

Looking over these things, I feel like this would be an exciting idea to play around with in the FFG 40K RPGs. I keep picturing Black Templars taking a battle barge to war against a completed grave-world, fighting across the surface, some of their number finding their drop pods trapped deep inside the pitch blackness of the coffin's interior, surrounded by immense mourning statues, even the air itself dying a slow death.

It makes me imagine things. Hopefully it'll do that for someone else, too.