If you are willing to share (/work it out), how did Ubasti come to be? Is he a Mittens-Tube-baby, did Magnus poke the universe so hard in surprise at all his brothers being back that he or Kitten got the ability to carry a baby...!? Wha happen!?
I needs to know! (bonus, how tf did everyone react when Magnus popped in with a baby(/egg >:3)?)
DO I HAVE UBASTI LORE!!
u guys do realize I don't talk specifics on here because i'm protecting you all right. i'll never shut up about them at this rate.
lets talk about the mittens kitten
so, first. Lets consider Juno. When she was born, while she was known to those in the immediate area and rumors circulated as rumors do, guilliman was actually very careful with who was introduced to her and in what circumstance (or, well, he tried to be. it's hard to actually keep other primarchs off his flagship once they hear there's Some Shit Afoot but. oh well.) In this way, Juno is relatively secret at first. A secret baby.
Ubasti is what we would call A Widely Advertised Baby.
Magnus is one of the first uncles to meet Juno. He shows up unannounced to Maccragge's honour and omg what's this?? baby niece??? oh my god she's so cute!!! rob why didn't you TELL me!!!! also wow I want one. and then he goes home to kitten and is like please. and kitten is like hey. I am not about to be pregnant. you're the one with biomancy powers. and Magnus is like ur so right. so [pleading face] and kitten is like. -.- good fucking lord.
so magnus is very excited to have a baby. and then the baby gets there and first of all, he immediately remembers that nothing he does ever goes well, and b) ubasti is. not so stable for the first uh. long while. Magnus is still more warp than not, even though his soul is firmly anchored to kitten’s now, so when Ubasti is born he’s more of a…combined piece of their souls in a loose construct of magnus’ creation more than anything else. and it means he’s extremely unstable. He can’t leave the warp because he’s literally not tethered to his body enough to stay in it in realspace, and even in the immaterium his ability to hold himself together is dicey at best. so ubasti’s first few years are spent in magnus’ warp palace, with his father holding him together and guarding against the hungry, hungry things trying to reach their claws into the nursery.
surprisingly, people notice when magnus goes quiet after the birth. they know the kid had some trouble but when magnus doesn’t show up crowing about his Best Baby Ever they’re like. well that’s probably not good.
emps knows about ubasti’s issues immediately because kitten goes to him but he can’t do much to help (not off the throne at this point, not very together yet). he does assist keeping baby together a little bit the first time ubasti gets a little weird in the materium. sang also knows bc he’s in the palace and a friend of magnus’ so he gets told. everyone else kind of finds out because they realize after a few days magnus hasn’t held the baby up like simba in their faces yet so they go snooping (or they just ask outright. thank you dorn.)
when they do find out most of them are. pretty worried. because magnus has been fairly tolerable lately, like. he’s reasonable to a lot of the traitors, hes made up with dad and dorn so the loyalists are inclined to put up with him at the very least like. it’s magnus! hes the fun one!! but all of them know how magnus’ things usually turn out so hearing that there’s something Wrong with the Baby is like. everyone has a little bit of a moment. like. you know how it is when u go and see a tragedy. like orpheus and eurydice. and you already know what happens. but when orpheus turns around you still take a moment and shut your eyes and go damn. and you have to steel yourself because you know when you open your eyes again you get to see it all fall apart now? it’s like that.
and then there’s russ. he doesn’t trust it when magnus goes radio silent and shoulders his way into magnus’ domain and they get into a fight because of course they do and magnus loses because of course he does and leman grabs the baby and then the baby starts falling apart in his hands and he’s like oh shit. oh shit ok.
I can't stress enough that this is like pants-shittingly terrifying for everyone involved. it’s scary!! baby failing to keep his physical form stable is Not Pretty (it’s basically an aggressive, painful example of the flesh change) and it’s clearly not like. An Intended Consequence. Magnus is not out here making secret daemon bombs, there is something Wrong with his Baby and hes being weird because this is his worst nightmare, leman.
so magnus rushes over and by the time he’s tucked ubasti back into solidity leman’s already gone. he just leaves.
and then an indeterminate amount of time later (warp) the sorcerers escort him back into the domain (he knocked this time) and he’s like ‘look. i don’t know anything about warp shit. and i don’t want to know, quite frankly. but i asked my rune priests and they gave me these,’ and he pulls out an assorted collection of talismans and protective wards, ‘so you can do whatever you want with that. I guess.’
and magnus is like
because he’s been way too busy falling apart to think to ask for help at this point. and if he lets leman give the kid a fenrisian wolf companion a few years later that’s nobody’s business, alright.
ubasti is fine by the time he’s a few years old for the record. his connection to the materium is still tenuous but it’s something he can mostly manage, though magnus and kitten keep him primarily in magnus’ domain until hes a teen. This is why juno doesn’t meet him till she’s running around in the warp herself, though she knows of him earlier.
he still gets metaphysically sick way easier than the rest of them tho, and his physical form isn't entirely Solid. occasionally he feels like hes Stuck in the materium and has to melt a little in the warp for a bit, but he has to be careful with that too so he doesn’t completely lose his connection to his body gkdjd Some of his realspace symptoms manifest in a way that's a little like EDS. He uses walking aids, finger splints, and Bylestir, his wolf, is a very well-trained service/medical alert companion.
there is exactly one person who never seemed to be worried (aside from angron and lorgar who are still mia) and that’s perturabo, who said nothing throughout this entire magnus-is-having-a-baby situation except for a cradle that mysteriously showed up on the sorcerer’s doorstep one day (it’s gorgeous. and mechanized for Gentle Rocking Motions ™️). he also says nothing about the There's Something Wrong With Magnus' Baby situation but there are incense-burner mobiles of prosperine birds, and starmap projectors and other things designed to sooth and occupy a sick baby’s time.
and then when the news comes out that the baby’s made it through the worst of it and is stabilizing, there’s a very extensive installation that shows up to the planet of sorcerers that’s about half a room, with painted walls and a high glass ceiling that casts starlight on a shallow disk on a pedestal, meant to be filled with water or some other reflective surface. there’s a note taped to the intricate latticed iron doors that just says ‘for when he’s older.’
Ubasti is pretty solid at scrying. For the record.
Do you have any more lore surrounding Tukaphri the youngest? Loyal servant of the eternal empire myself, so I desire more details of how the little prince wound up with the gang. Love the tidbits you’ve been drawing!
DO I HAVE LORE ABOUT TUK. As if all my ocs don't come with a novel's worth of ideas always slkdfjls Gonna preface this with I haven't read a ton of necron stuff so some of this is subject to change/handwaved explanation till I get a better hold on things but:
Tukhaphri the Youngest of the Ayamarna Dynasty
Yeah so Tuk! Lil Tuk. my lil tuktankhamen. he is the youngest, was the youngest, actually, of seventeen! Such a prolific dynastic line had no need for a seventeenth heir, and tuk was very little when the biotransference happened, and so he was kept as like. a permababy. He's functional of course, for the c'tan, and he has some personality, as a royal, but he's more of a pet than a person.
He was transferred into a bespoke ‘child’ frame which also locked his engrams, a limiting factor that affected how and how much he could process things, essentially freezing his mind at the age of 5-7. He’s a baby for basically all of necron history, and spends most of his time on his mother’s lap being treated like a beloved pet and a symbol of the dynasty’s fertility and power up through the big sleep.
Now, there was a clever protocol enacted by the dynasty as a security measure. Namely, in the event of the death of the overlord, the command protocols for the crown world are transferred to the next available heir, right on down the line. With sixteen adult heirs, spread across the dynastic strongholds, this means gaining control of the crown world is pretty impossible unless you were somehow able to get them all at once.
So anyway someone murders the dynasty in their sleep. It’s a surefire plan, all you have to do is make sure you’re the next available lord in the court records and you’re all set!
Unless you forget that there’s actually seventeen heirs. Because then the dynasty would be dead, the court would be in shambles, and you would not actually have control of the planetary defense systems or the immortals or any of the other soldiers. You didn't forget there were seventeen of them. right? Because if you did, they’re all working for the kid now. And the thing about the kid is he’s stuck being and thinking like a kid, and, when you’ve been acclimated to the same kind of regular and sane courtly drama over the past several million years, kids are fucking nuts.
Have you seen Terran 3rd Millenium masterpiece Home Alone? I want you to imagine that but Kevin has access to real guns, several accomplished assassins, minor temporal miracles, and orbital bombardments.
By the time the Stormlord arrives to claim their fealty Tuk is enjoying his newfound freedom by terrorizing the court nobles, who have not figured out what's going on since Tuk has hidden himself wizard-of-oz-man-behind-the-curtain style, using an adult-frame servant necron as a cover.
Imotekh figures the trick out quickly, but has no idea what to do with like, a whole child. The original limitations to Tuk's mind means that he neither has memories (fake or real) of flesh times nor does he have a full pre-program of necron culture. He is, essentially, a blank slate. Someone (Trazyn) points out that, as he is, in fact, very much like a real actual child, Tuk could be raised as someone’s personal successor and Imotekh and Szarekh start fighting over him, and then someone (Trazyn) has to go and dig up old necrontyr laws about what to do when custody of a minor is contested and yadda yadda, and the two end up with a kind of shared visitation rights agreement, with the understanding that Tuk will choose one of them to serve under when he comes of age properly.
Tuk is a little odd for a necron. A combination of a lack of any pre-programmed personality and culture and the fact that he is, you know, a kid, means Tuk is perfectly situated to love everything the adults hate. He adores uncle Zahndrekh, is completely unafraid of the flayers, and loves to learn about fleshy gross stuff like bodily fluids and decomposition (morty is his favorite primarch).
Trazyn does try to steal him on occasion, but he never quite has the heart to lock him down fully (part of his charm is he’s alive!!! and so weird about it! delightful!!!) and Tuk thinks the jail breaking is a fun game. The kid grows up scarily clever.
To get around the engrammatic locks, they need to transfer him to a different frame, but they also wanted to keep it clear that he’s still considered a ward of the state as it were and subject to different laws, so he gets a custom ‘teen’ frame, which is the one oddball knows. (trazyn does keep the baby frame. it's on display. in case you were wondering)
Speaking of Oddball! In Updated Codex, Szarekh and Sanguinius are in fact friends as Szarekh implied (whether or not they actually met during the crusade or a newly returned sanguinius heard this guy was boldly using his name to gain allies and went ‘actually that’s hilarious you sound fun’ is anyone’s guess). They’ve been trying to work on a more solid necron/human alliance but there were too many questions on both sides. When sanguinius’ brothers have kids coming of age that don’t seem to fit anywhere, he gets an idea. Oddball, sorry, ‘Zero Squad’ is an experiment in playing nice with other factions long term.
While Oddball may seem stacked as an Imperial operation at first glance, the truth is much more complicated due to the fractured nature of the human faction, Juno’s parentage, and Tuk’s involvement. In truth they are ‘imperially sanctioned,’ but they are similarly allowed by The Silent King and given provisions in the laws of Ultramar, for example, without actually belonging to any one group. Their later unofficial additions, A-0 and B-0 squads, cover an even broader range in the setting.
But we’re getting off-topic, this is a Tuk post! Tukhaphri is the Oddball’s resident blackstone expert. His time trapping his homeworld means he’s an excellent tinkerer and is responsible for the Oddball’s flagship The Empty having a modified warp drive that uses necron tech to travel without a navigator, as well as the blackstone limiter they use to domesticate Lil Nid. Otherwise he’s a passable fighter and can also lend the strength of his immortals when they need ground troops. He often gets into spats with Ubasti over strategy
but generally is quite easygoing. While he and juno were a bit wary of each other at first, they become the best of friends.
