40K The Archives of the Laurekh Dynasty: Lord Agragax’s Necron Fluff and Lore

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

As you all probably know by my signature, I am also a member of a Necron forum called Necrontyr Online, and there I go by my Necron alias, Mithihotep the Indomitable, Phaeron of the Laurekh Dynasty. Now that that nice little forum has been dragged into the jaws of Tapatalk, however, it has become more lifeless than the Necrons themselves. Therefore it is with great pleasure that I dedicate this thread to my collection of lore and stories about the Laurekh Dynasty of Necrons, and you’ll see why I’ve done this soon. Enjoy!

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

This here is my first piece of lore about the Laurekh Dynasty that I wrote almost two years ago now:

The Laurekh Dynasty is a largely-hidden Dynasty that has only just begun to awake. Based far in the Western Fringe, the first of its people began to wake around 65 million years ago. Its Crownworld, Manticoros, was apparently devastated by the Eldar many years before, but the Dynasty's incredibly intelligent Phaeron, Mithihotep the Indomitable, located all the most important Tomb constructs underground, where the Dynasty's arch-enemies could not find them. The masters of this Dynasty are illustrated in all their glory below.

Mithihotep the Indomitable
The ancient, undying Phaeron of the Laurekh Dynasty, Mithihotep built his empire billions of leagues away from the other Phaerons, so that there would be room for his people to grow and prosper without fear of detection on the part of the cruel Craftworld Eldar. Yet he is not as content as he would want to be. Mihihotep's beautiful wife, Lunari, was murdered by the C'Tan known as the Deceiver to personally spite Mithihotep. Enraged, the Phaeron took one shard of the Deceiver, known as A'Raken, and held it captive within its Necrodermis for millennia to torture it, before binding it to his own soul to render it completely subservient to him. This act of vengeance satisfied Mithihotep for a while, but since then he felt more keenly the loneliness that came with his queen's death. Yet this does not stop him. Maddening thoughts of longing may drive him to distraction at times, but the Phaeron of the Laurekh Dynasty remains a stable and powerful ruler. When on his throne he often fiddles around with his Tesseract Labyrinth, one of his most prized possessions, but he has done so with more caution since he pressed the wrong button once and it swallowed him up into its maze. The Phaeron only escaped through recognising the scent of his wife's beautiful blonde hair, which led him to the escape port. Since then, he has been plotting the takeover of the Tyranid race, to grant him some powerful allies to help ensure the demise of the Eldar, the Imperium of Man and the other vile aliens that would dare desecrate his world. He is pleased that his strategy for eluding the Eldar worked; the only sign the Eldar ever intruded on Manticoros is the Phaeron's cough, which was caused by an Eldar ranger accidentally breaking off the only component of the tomb complex above ground, which led to Mithihotep's own stasis-crypt becoming damaged. Mithihotep lives a largely peaceful life now, believing that his glory days as supreme general are largely over, and keeps a collection of curious animals and birds from both planets within the Laurekh Dynasty territory and beyond to give him something to show his affection for now that his wife was deceased. He thinks of himself as just an amateur exobiologist, yet believes he is far superior to any other race's equivalent.

Alvar the Cloaked
The only son of Mithihotep before the death of Lunari, and heir to the Laurekh Dynasty, Alvar seems to have inherited his father's guile and tactical genius, but is more underhanded In his ways. Instead of having a detachment of Laurekh Blueshields to protect him, Alvar has a squad of Shadow Hunters, known simply as the Seven, to accompany him. The Seven are his own squad of assassins, despatched by Alvar whenever a key target presents itself. Alvar could easily use this to enforce Mihtihotep's demise, but he feels such a strategy would be dirty even for him, and feels a great loyalty towards his father. As a result, this cunning, sneaky Overlord is often present as lieutenant commander of the armies of the Laurekh Dynasty. Yet Alvar possesses a secret even his father doesn't know - a swarm of Mindshackle scarabs has made its home within his chest.

Vargard Kromm
The most loyal of all Mithihotep's royal court, Kromm speaks little, even for a Necron Lord, but his actions speak far louder than his words. His unswerving loyalty towards his liege has saved Mithihotep from several assassination attempts and assaults on the battlefield. As a result, he has been made head of the Laurekh Blueshields, Mithihotep's own regiment of Lychguard who stand by him wherever he goes. He is also one of the bravest of the lords of the Laurekh Dynasty, and is always first into the fray, even before Mithihotep himself.

Illuminor Sahutaruk
The greatest of the Crypteks serving the Laurekh Dynasty, Sahutaruk is also the father of the discipline known as the Harbingers of Eternity. A revered figure, he was the first to discover the art of temporal distortion, his cyclopean eye perceiving the past, present and future all in one. With a flick of his wrist he can hurl a Space Marine back into the past, and with a simple thrust of his Aeonstave he can send an entire squad of Imperial Guardsmen into the future to be massacred by an Ork horde or a Tyranid swarm. He even bested the Daemon Kairos Fateweaver, who thought he knew more about time than any other being. He was wrong. Sahutaruk was once bipedal like the rest of his kind, but was cleaved in twain at the waist by an Eldar Autarch. Mithihotep was able to kill the Eldar before Sahutaruk was finished off, but when the Cryptek attempted to reanimate, the servomotors in his legs failed to activate, burned out by the attack. His still-living torso was returned to the Stasis Crypts where Mithihotep presented him with a set of four, spider-like legs. Far from being a disability, these new legs made Sahutaruk even more of a cultural figure to the Laurekh Dynasty.

The Cult Nihilus
Although the Laurekh Dynasty were able to escape the Destroyer Virus, they were not immune to the whisperings of destruction and annihilation. Indeed, many of its people have succumbed to insatiable desires to blast everything that is non-metallic to oblivion, and have joined the Cult Nihilus, the Destroyer Cult that inhabits many of the Laurekh Dynasty's worlds. However, the cult was banished from Manticoros due to a spate of bickering between Mithihotep and the chieftain of the Cult, Luthor the Maddened, over whose wife was the most beautiful. Nevertheless, the Cult will provide reinforcements to the Laurekh Dynasty in times of need in return for tithe, whatever it may be that the Cult desires.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

This is the first piece of lore that I wrote about my Dynasty, similar to an Aesop's fable-type story.

Mithihotep and the Portrait​

Mithihotep the Indomitable wandered through the dusty remains of the Imperial city, alone. As he strode slowly through the abandoned streets, following the left-hand side of the main road, he gazed around at the shells of human buildings lying either side of him, like corpses with their flesh stripped from them. The Greenskins had pillaged everything from this place - not a single artefact for him to scavenge for his collection. Then he spotted a small, dilapidated building set apart from the rest, a small place of worship that was bedecked in the ugly architecture that the humans so loved. He approached the structure and forced open the ceramite door.

There was just a single, small room with a rug on the stone floor and a small altar. A human dressed in priestly robes was slumped forward on the rug with a massive blunt blade, presumably one that the Greenskins had made, sticking out of his back. He had been stabbed while praying.

Mithihotep picked up the corpse with one hand and slung it out of the doorway - not even in death were the humans polite enough to make way for his magnificence - and inspected the small chapel.

On the wall at the front was a huge portrait of a human female, clad in golden armour and with wings sticking out from her back. In her right hand she clutched a long blade, and scrolls extended from her red dress under her armour. All around her there were fat little humans with their own stubby wings fluttering around her, and a blaze of light from the harsh desert sun illuminated the effigy of the Living Saint in all her glory.

Mithihotep inspected the portrait for quite a while.

"How revolting. My Lunari was far more delicate and beautiful than that," Mithihotep said at last, "How petty these humans were to think that such an unattractive female is even worth looking at, let alone worshipping. They know nothing of true beauty."

Then, seeing nothing else of interest, he gave a melancholy sigh, coughed three times and turned his back on the artwork, leaving the chapel with the door open, so that the sun could get to work in bleaching the glorious icon that had been so revered by the people of the Hive City.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

This was a piece of lore I wrote during the prelude to 8th Edition, charting the Laurekh Dynasty's development during the Gathering Storm period. I first posted it to Necrontyr Online back in the day, but am now updating my Necron thread on this forum with it too so that the upcoming lore I'm writing revolving around the events leading up to 9th Edition will come after it.

The Laurekh Dynasty in the Gathering Storm​

As time passed and the Gathering Storm arose throughout the Galaxy, Mithihotep knew it was time to enact the Ceremony of Resurrection. A few months previously he had led his legions to the forgotten world of Eleuthera II in search of a relic known only as the Vulkite Diamond, a crystal that contained incomprehensible power within. After destroying a small reconnaissance force of Ultramarines belonging to the 5th Company, Mithihotep rescued the crystal from the clutches of a warband of Khornate Chaos Space Marines from the Skulltakers Legion. Many of his brave soldiers had been slain by the barbarians, and an ancient Monolith that had accompanied them into the battle was now a smoking wreck, but the Phaeron knew this mattered little, as their sacrifice would ensure the Vulkite Diamond would return Mithihotep's most prized possession to him.

Several weeks later a fleet bearing the Laurekh Dynasty's colours emerged from the Warp to orbit the Forge World Kartaros VI, where a triad of Magos Domini held court with their Skitarii cohorts. Kartaros VI was a remote world with the closest Imperial garrison three dozen parsecs away, so the isolated Adeptus Mechanicus forces were little match for the disciplined armies of the Laurekh Dynasty. Three quarters of the population of that world were destroyed without pity, and the remainder were taken by the Necrons to be turned into living weapons of war. At the heart of the Forge World was a millennia-old temple that had been built before the events of the Horus Heresy, where there was a shrine that for centuries had been missing a key component that would produce a shield so large as to be able to protect the whole planet, but Mithihotep had found that artefact - the Vulkite Diamond. He called in Illuminor Sahutaruk and his group of lesser Crypteks, who for three days and two nights worked upon connecting the shrine to an ornate casket that Mithihotep had brought with him to the Forge World.

On the third night, when the planet's moon was shining full in the sky, Mithihotep had a Doom Scythe destroy the roof of the temple with its Death Ray, so that the Ceremony would be carried out beneath the moon's gaze. Once the shrine's power grid had been fully connected to the casket, Mihtihotep silently placed the crystal into its holder. Immediately a burst of power came from the crystal and surged into the casket, buckling the lid and twisting the ancient metal it was formed of. All around the casket recoiled from the phenomenon and covered their photoreceptors as a huge orb of blinding light snapped into being around the scene. Then, all was quiet. Mithihotep was the first to approach the now ruptured casket and pulled off what was left of the lid. Inside lay the delicate form of a female Necron, with an ornate crown atop her brow and long tresses of blonde hair cascading down to her waist, for this had been the stasis tomb of Lunari, Mithihotep's wife, companion and love. For a long while the Queen's body showed no movement, but then her photoreceptors began to brighten, and Lunari of the Laurekh Dynasty, who had been dead for untold thousands of years, now arose to her feet clad in the silver metal dress she had worn when the C'Tan Shard of the Deciver A'Raken had remorselessly stabbed her all those aeons ago. The stab-wound that had gone right through her chest and out of the other side was no more, reknitted and reformed by the great power of the crystal, and her personality had not changed a bit.

"My lord, my life, my love," she then said softly to her awed husband, "I have awoken."

But she had also been changed by her resurrection. When Kartaros VI was subsequently attacked by an Imperial Guard platoon that had been transported there to aid the destroyed forces of the Mechanicus, Lunari exhibited a power unknown by any Necron of the Laurekh Dynasty, not even Sahutaruk, the greatest of Crypteks. Angered by the humans' presence disrupting the time she could now share with her husband, Lunari began to levitate as a squad of the humans approached her, a white orb forming around her as she stretched her arms out wide, before white lightning began to burst from her metal fingers to electrocute each of the Guardsmen, wracking their bodies with nerve-shredding pain and illuminating their bones as the electricity surged through them. She did not stop until all of those Imperials died at her feet, at which point the orb disappeared and she landed gracefully to the ground, once more the serene lady of the Laurekh Dynasty. She was no longer just the consort of Phaeron Mithihotep the Indomitable, she was now the Embodiment of the Stars, a powerful Necron sorceress with the ability to call down the wrath of the heavens upon the foes of the Laurekh Dynasty. Not that this changed how much she loved her family or her home, but her newfound powers were far beyond anything Mithihotep, Alvar or even the wise Sahutaruk had ever discovered before.

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