Sharing lore hook for Necrons in 4th Tyrannic War narrative Crusade campaign

[N1SB]

Hi guys, not setting any lore, simply sharing an idea we ourselves are using, in case it may be useful to others.

 

Other Necron players and I are doing a campaign in our Warhammer Store, based on the current 4th Tyrannic War Crusade rules.  The Crusade rules are pretty open-ended (and really fun), there's nothing excluding Necrons, but due to the narrative drive of such campaigns, we wanted our armies to have a reason to show up.

 

Although our armies have their own motivations, they were all drawn by an incident described in Belisarius Cawl: the Great Work, that happened on Sotha, the homeworld of the Ultramarines Successor Scythes of the Emperor (the ones with the black armour and yellow torso paint scheme).  You might remember it from 30k.  Spoiler below with the lore:

 

Sotha was a planet with a mountain-sized Necron construct called the Pharos device.  It was used by Humans both in 30k and recently in 40k.

In 30k, after the Ultramarines were betrayed by the Word Bearers at Calth, they were cut off.  The Primarch Roboute Guilliman set up his Imperium Secundus as described in The Unremembered Empire.  As part of this "back-up" Imperium, he needed his own beacon to attract the disparate Loyalist forces.

 

Sotha was one of the 500 Worlds of Ultramar.  A Loyalist Iron Warrior found and activated the Pharos device, leading both the Dark and Blood Angels to Ultramar.

 

Then in 40k, Belisarius Cawl returned there, after the Plague War in Ultramar (so like, 9th ed).  He wanted to study the Pharos device in the hopes of learning how to develop similar technology vs. Chaos.  It turns out the Pharos device was powered by a C'tan shard.  He freed it, but tricked it to be teleported into the middle of like a Necron battlefleet.

 

This is the hook our Necron players are using.  Some Human not only used one of our devices, they managed to take it apart and free a C'tan shard.  Whatever course of action Necrons should take...they gotta take a look around 1st, see what's up.  So our Necrons have our own agendas, but kinda converged to the area, to see what's going on there.

 

They found themselves watching this epic war.  And chose to take part for their own reasons.

 

Thus, this hook uses existing lore, but is broad enough to incorporate our own armies' stories.  It just gave us an area to go to the Ultramar region...what we do once we get there is up to us.  Not a big deal, it really came about when one of our players quipped, "Why are you Necrons getting involved in the Tyrannic War?" and this lore came to mind.