@saltwaterjanuary , I am so glad you asked ^_^
Henket Dynasty is a tiny thing, one of the poorest to stay independent. Besides its crownworld, Rekhetara, it barely had any planets to its name.
In its Great Sleep, Rekhetara was guarded by a trio of Triarch Praetorians. But when, during the early days of human expansion, they witnessed a colony ship descend onto the planet, the praetorians knew their power alone won’t be enough to go to war with them. Neither did they want to risk awakening the tomb so early, possibly damaging the sleepers and alerting humans to the tomb’s presence.
The praetorians chose to bid their time instead and subtly guide the humans away from the tomb.
Rekhetara was a harsh place for humans: dry, with an unforgiving sun and some deadly fauna. When the connection with the Imperium was lost, the colony began to struggle. Generation by generation, they were descending into tribalism, yet refusing to die out and instead populated more and more of the planet.
The praetorians chose to seize this moment and stepped out toward the humans like benevolent gods. They gave them some primitive (by necron standards) technology to deal with the environment and taught them necrontyr culture, shaping them into the vision of the Triarch.
Many centuries later, when the Herket Dynasty woke up in fullest, they found themselves living under a planet of Unclean thralls. The world worshipped necrons like gods, but was developed technologically like an average Imperium world.
Before the Great Sleep, the Herket Dynasty’s phaeron was Garshkand the Plunderer - a warrior-ruler who plundered great riches in the War in Heaven, but squandered them all just as easily by giving lavish diplomatic gifts to other dynasties. His poor dynasty stayed poor, if independent, at least.
If he were to wake up and see what was happening on Rekhetara, he would have likely ordered an extermination of humans immediately, even if this started a war that would gut his own forces.
However, during the Great Sleep he suffered from a statis-tomb failure, and his engrams have degraded to the point of almost complete loss of mental function. What was left in his head was more fit for a necron warrior than for a noble.
Garshkand’s court cryptek, Deknaris the Fleshsmith, along with many court nobles, has woken up earlier than Garshkand was scheduled to, and noticed the awakening failure. He seized this opportunity to take power, claiming that only he had hopes of awakening Garshkand properly, and that he could read his will straight from Garshkand’s engrams with his cryptek arts. Thus, Deknaris became the Henket’s regent.
In his mind, Deknaris was acting out of nobility. Like many crypteks, he considered to be smarter than anyone else around, and certainly a better fit for the throne than any other of the awakened or asleep nobles.
He was, at the very least, smart enough to realize that the humans were here to be used, not to be fought against. Deknaris studied them in and out, wondering if their bodies can be used as new vessels for necron minds - a reversal of biotransference that Szarekh dreamed about.
Before biotransference, Deknaris was a biomancer, and his nickname was a source of his pride. But when necrontyr shed flesh, it became mockery, and he lost his patronage in Novokh’s court. Nobody else was willing to take Deknaris on a position fit for his rank, and he didn’t want to be a slave to other crypteks, used and burning for his computing power.
So he claimed to be a technomancer and went to seek patronage in places where there weren’t many other crypteks to dispute him. At the same time, he studied new cryptek arts. The “fake until you make it” approach gave Deknaris his position in Henket’s court.
Garshkand had an heir - a daughter. Her name was Narkhias, and she was scheduled to wake up one of the latest in the tomb. Before the biotransference, her father kept her as a diplomatic token to marry off. She had an elder brother, an actual heir - but he died in War in Heaven post-biotransference. By that point, however, heirs were a detriment to a ruler.
Narkhias had a warrior’s training, and a noble’s upringing, but disliked both fighting and politicking. Her real passion went for arts. She has been a painter, a sculptor, a musician, a weaver and more - Narkhias expressed her creativity through all kinds of ways. The loss of a soul was a heavy blow to her. She couldn’t look at her old art anymore, and ordered it to be destroyed.
However, her loyal handmaiden and closest friend, Ukhasha, couldn’t bear to do it. Although Ukhasha understood nothing about arts both before and after biotransference, she knew how much her mistress values these works in the times of flesh. So Ukhasha secretly put them into a stasis vault, to be opened when the mistress’s mood improves.
Ukhasha knew nothing about combat, either. Yet, after biotransference he got a body and combat protocols of a lychguard - simply because there were no bodies for civilians, and Narkhias refused that her handmaiden would be turned into a lowly warrior like all other servants of the house.
Both Narkhias and Ukhasha slept peacefully through three centuries of Deknaris’s rule - he had convinced the tomb’s autonomous spirit to delay their awakening. Then, the tomb’s spirit registered fluctuations in the celestial spheres - the Great Rift’s opening. Following its programming, the spirit began speeding up the awakening process.
Narkhias woke up and went to search for her father. Deknaris tried to tell her the same story as he told others - that although he was immobile and mute, Garshkand can absolutely be healed eventually. And if not, it doesn’t matter because Deknaris can speak for him.
However, Narkhias refused to believe it without inspecting Garshkand herself, and Deknaris couldn’t bar her way - she had more authority to control the dynasty’s legions than he did. And she had a personal lychguard.
Narkhias sent her consciousness into her father’s mind, and a single peek was all she needed to see the truth. Her father has deteriorated too much to be saved. Thus, she ended his suffering and his life, becoming the Heknet phaeron.
Then she turned on Deknaris.
She wanted to kill him at first, but he was the most competent cryptek of the dynasty. Which said a lot about its state. Deknaris’s abilities were too valuable to lose, so instead Narkhias ordered a dimensional shackle to be brought from the vault.
This device was used to shackle necrons, blocking their ability to translocate and shift dimensions without the permission from the shackle’s keyholder. With its help, Narkhias shackled Deknaris to herself, to keep a close eye on him. Whenever she went, Deknaris was also forced to go.
There wasn’t more time to spend on infighting. At this time, the tomb’s autonomous spirit warned Narkhias, that ships were noticed in the solar system - a chaos warband that splintered from Abbadon’s fleet was spat out of warp here and was descending upon Rekhetara.
this is so cool
