[40k] Questions regarding the Warp/Souls

[NecronLord]

White_rabbit, I can now sympathize with your sig. A person I know, who is also a rabid trektard, tried to argue with me that the Borg would defeat the Necrons. The gist of his argument was, "The Necrons use antimatter, but so does all of Star Trek, so obviously, the Borg are more advanced," "the Borg would adapt to the Necron weapons," and finally, "once a Necron is assimilated, then all the Borg will be self healing." I was stunned. I just sat there, amazed that such stupidity could exist.

Have you pointed out to him that those nanoprobes tend to be injected into... bloodstreams?

And to paraphrase Dad's Army, what's the necron going to be doing while they walk up to it and poke it with their little fangs?

[Zablorg]

White_rabbit, I can now sympathize with your sig. A person I know, who is also a rabid trektard, tried to argue with me that the Borg would defeat the Necrons. The gist of his argument was, "The Necrons use antimatter, but so does all of Star Trek, so obviously, the Borg are more advanced," "the Borg would adapt to the Necron weapons," and finally, "once a Necron is assimilated, then all the Borg will be self healing." I was stunned. I just sat there, amazed that such stupidity could exist.

I didn't know that the Necrons used anti-matter. I thought they used "fleshpeelers". Ouchie.

And because I like beating a miscarriaged horse, wouldn't the Borg require a good deal of that "living metal" to do the self healing? And wouldn't they require to be made entirely made of the living metal to make it practical? And how would they adapt to their flesh being ripped off? Bah.

Liber chaotica describes souls and warp entities as basically swirling vortex type thingies, corresponding to certain emotions, ideas etc, which would amalagamate and accumulate depending on how well they were matched.

So a more powerful soul is the result of whatever metaphysical ability or effect that allows an individual to force/influence a segment of the frothing chaos in the warp into alignment with their ideas and emotions.

Is that why you feel invigorated when your opinion is widely held?

[NecronLord]

I didn't know that the Necrons used anti-matter. I thought they used "fleshpeelers". Ouchie.

It sounds more like some kind of ZPE to me; and it's from an article about the (out of universe) design of the miniatures; they're meant to look as if they're powered by the universe itself. Dawn of War gives the Necrons a field-erectable type of plasma reactor like everyone else, but they appear to use that for summoning more units from dead tomb worlds, rather than actually powering themselves. The BFG rules suggest that the ships have a power core which can be damaged, reducing their leadership (or in this case, the efficiency of the vessel) and from which power flows throughout the vessel. Medusa V says they can power some anti-warp technology using the 'essence' of the living. The unofficial-but-on-the-website fan-created BFG expansion 'The Book of Nemesis' gives a number of energy related refits, including the suggestion (repeated from elsewhere 'stored solar energy' is a popular term) that necron ships can drain energy from stars; indeed, having a dyson swarm/frame/sphere like solar-harness to accellerate repairs and construction is the first result on the necron appeals table there.

They've quite a diverse number of power sources, but antimatter doesn't generally appear to be one of them. At the very least, they can convert energy into living metal (this being shown in the necron codex) I wouldn't be surprised if they can do the reverse, making antimatter quite useless as a storage medium.

And because I like beating a miscarriaged horse, wouldn't the Borg require a good deal of that "living metal" to do the self healing? And wouldn't they require to be made entirely made of the living metal to make it practical? And how would they adapt to their flesh being ripped off? Bah.

They wouldn't. They've obviously no interest (Lore's group aside) in becoming inorganic.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well,w e definitely know that the Emperor has angels he sends out; Hlaine Larkin encountered one, and though that short story leads one to conclude at first that she was just a symptom of his madness, the cloth that he used to brace his gun had to have come from somewhere.

There's a short story in one of the old "anthologies" where some Navigator got enmeshed in an attack by daemons in the warp, cries out for the Emperor's help, and the Emperor (or some part of him, or some agent of his) appears along the Astronomican and guides the ship to safety.

In the Blood Angels duology, the main character Rafen is reputedly visited on several occasions (and possibly posssessed/assisted by) Sanguinius, so an argument can be made that the Primarchs as well serve some "angelic" function.

Its also quite likely that the Emperor, given the aforementioned Inquisition War novels, is more a gestalt/collective of indidivudla psychic beings (like those thousands of shaman who reputedly incarnated into him in earlier fluff) and each of those supposedly can take a hand overseeing various duties and parts of the Imperium. That's in addition to whatever souls/psykers he consumes (and presumably adds to the power pool - I imagine each one becomes a new potential "agent") and those billions of psykers he's soul bonded to (He's acted through astropaths before - the aforementioned Execution hour is a good point) and the Soul Binding link also would give the Emperor a great way to keep tabs on the goings on of the Imperium (and how to best influence matters to his benefit.)

When you also tap into the fact he probably has more believers than all of Chaos combined (at least outside the Eye of Terror) its probably no wonder he can fight all four Chaos Gods at once.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Necrons are supposed to use the "raw energy of creation" IIRC which could mean anything

In SciFi, that generally refers to the energy around directly after the Big Bang. Which is generally a fucntion of density (closely approaching planck's temperature).

In fantasy or scifi which doesnt follow Big Bang theory who the fuck knows.

The necrons and Star Gods can probably tap into alot of different energy sources in "this" unvierse. Given the descriptions of the Star Gods, they seem to be giant living batteries/capacitors for all intents and purposes - they can absorb and store immense amounts of energy in various forms. (its possible they may consume warp energy or some other extradimensional power source through living beings.. the body may act as some sort of buffer or power conversion system - at least in the case of the Warp.) Necron tech seems to incorporate a fair bit of "enerrgy handling" capacity of its own.

Maybe the Necrons can spontaneously convert matter to energy and vice versa - that's definitely been implied to be within the scope of their capabilities. They may tap some warp analogue(if one dimension like that exists others might.)