Maynarkh Dynasty



The Maynarkh Dynasty forms one of the subdivision to the Necron race and is perhaps alongside the Sautekh Dynasty one of the most military-minded and powerful ruling dynasties of their entire race. Conquerors and exterminators, the Maynarkh have always been loyal servants of the Silent King, often acting as his right hand to punish those that would oppose him. This has earned them the hostility of many other dynasties, many of whom which would have preferred for the Maynarkh to be destroyed or never to be reawoken at all, but loathe to lose such a precious tool, the Silent King had taken special precautions to ensure that the Maynark would survive their 60 million year long slumber. The Maynarkh only recently awoke from their stasis-tombs and the Undying Legions of the Maynark were responsible for the utter devastation and loss of the Orpheus Sector, on the exterior border of the Segmentum Tempestus of the Imperium of Mankind. In what has since then been called the Orphean War, the reawakening Maynarkh Dynasty has brought an entire Imperial Sector low, their further intentions are unknown.

History
Long before the War in Heaven, the Maynarkh already possessed a sinister reputation amongst its kindred. Unlike other Royal Courts of the Necrontyr, the Maynarkh stood out not only for their loyalty and courage, but also for their ruthlessness, their savagery in combat and their malice. Above all others, these traits were those that the Silent King openly valued, seeing in the Maynarkh not only faithful and loyal soldiers in the war against the servants of the Old Ones, and later on the C’tans, but also red-handed agents of his own will. While the Maynarkh's honour was unquestioned, these qualities and their closeness to power made that some of the other courts openly distrusted the Maynark, considering them as distasteful and lacking in refinery, even going as far as calling them uncivilised. This general disdain for the Maynarkh quickly became common ground, even leading long-standing feuds between rivaling dynasties to be put aside in order to hinder the Maynarkh's advancement in the incessant power-plays, vendettas and intrigues that plagued the Necrontyr’s highest echelons. This in turn led the Maynark to claim what they wanted through open violence and even outright relentless and naked and unrelenting aggression where other dynasties made use of far more subtle means: for instance, those lesser dynasties bound in service to the Maynark most often did this under the threat of extermination. This in turn fuelled the Maynarkh's reputation for brutality. The Nemesors of other dynasties might have condemned the Maynarkh's lack of subtlety and strategic elegance, none could deny the brutal effectiveness of the Maynarkhs.

The Maynarkh's true actions in the War in Heaven are the matter of some conjecture, for even the oldest and greatest overlords of the Necron crownworlds remember well the truly ancient battles against the star gods, for the truly horrific weapons unleashed to destroy the C'tans damaged causality itself. Furthermore, in his constant paranoia that these weapons might be turned against him, the Silent King erased the memories of all of his servants, even the most trusted ones. To further guarantee the Maynarkh's loyalty, the Silent King implemented powerful command protocols during the biotransference process that effectively turned the Maynark dynasty into his personal henchmens and executioners. Legend has it that it was by the hands of the Maynark that the C'tan known as Llandu’gor the Flayer was not only defeated and shattered, but truly obliterated. With his last breath, the defeated C'tan is said to have cursed the Maynarkh, infecting them with a measure of his own terrible hunger for life, and certainly the demeanor of the reawoken Maynarkh lend weight to this dark legend. It is also interesting to notice that following the destruction of the Flayer, perception of the Maynark was further altered, as the first cases of the Curse manifested within the rank of the Maynarkh, letting devolve some of the once proud warriors into grim and fleshhungry Flayed Ones. Slowly, the Curse of the Flayer began to creep through their ranks, moving higher up the echelons even before the Necron entered hibernation. The "stench of blood" that began to gather around the Maynarkh further stained the dynasty’s reputation and the Maynark were gradually perceived as little more than outcasts, banished to the desolate, lifeless and turbulent regions of the galactic South-West.

Yet, despite the pressures of other indeed more powerful dynasties, the Silent King did not abandon the Maynark and continued to show them his favours. To further taint the Maynarkh's reputation, their rivals gave birth to a series of dark rumors, which have increasingly become intertwined with the truth. In the backrooms of Necron politics, the Phaerons of the Sauthek and the Atun Dynasties secretly plotted for the destruction of the Maynarkh in a last effort to cleanse their ranks before entering the Great Sleep. However the Silent King would have none of it, for he had still use for the troops of the Maynark and went to great efforts to ensure that the Maynarkh would survive their long hibernation. As part of these efforts, the Maynarkh's crownworlds were not merely hidden from outside eyes, but even from the other Necron Dynasties. The Silent King spared no expense to ensure that upon their awakening, the Maynarkh would be able to answer his call, ensuring that the Maynarkh’s Tomb Worlds were equipped with solar manipulator arrays and hyperspatial flux generators to keep them out of harms way. In this, the forced exiled of the Maynarkh was a boon, for the region of space allotted as their domain was frequently visited by Warp Storms and other celestial calamities.

The Great Sleep
As preparations for the Great Sleep progressed and time passed, the effect of the Curse of the Flayer began to take its toll. After the lower orders, the Maynark’s upper echelons were increasingly succumbing to the Curse. Those that did not succumb outright to the Curse were profoundly altered, their patience increasingly diminished by a growing bellicuous temper, which gradually turned into an unearthly bloodlust and ended in a descent into homicidal madness. Like a ghost in a matrix, the Maynarks clung to their ancient war codes and ritualised pattern of war in a vain hope that this madness could be tempered or harnessed by their honour as warriors, but in doing so they perverted their own ideals. While fanatical adherence to this code of conduct was once expected, the Maynark’s ruthlessness became a compulsion, a thirst to be slaked before the next genocide could be enacted.

In the meantime, in their own paranoia or perhaps as the first sign of the Curse, the Maynark’s Overlords themselves tasked their Crypteks to create an ever-growing variety of war marchines and Canoptek guardians, further equipping their dynasty in order to wage war on its ennemies and increasing their own defences. It is generally believed that it was at this moment, sixty million years ago that such baleful machines as the Tomb Stalker and the Acanthrite were invented. The ruling classes of the Maynark where under no illusion that the Great Sleep might stop the Curse, and indeed many if their numbers supposed that it would rather mark the slow death knell of their dynasty, that in the silence of the stasis-crypts the Curse would worm its way into the Maynarks over the millennias and that only a tide of ravenous ghoul-automata would emerge, mindlessly trying to slake their unquenchable thirst for blood and hunger for flesh. Basically, the Maynark feared to succumb to the same fate that would befall the Bone Kingdom of Drazak, or the Oroskh Dynasty. Yet when the time came to enter the Great Sleep, still bound by the Silent King’s command, all of the Maynark entered the hibernation-process that would see the Necron reemerge in the 41st Millennium.

The Silent King’s foresight and the Maynark’s own paranoia would see to it that the dynasty passed true the eons relatively unscathed, for the Maynark’s Tomb Worlds had been well hidden, protected by layer after layer of concealement and murderous defences. Far better shielded from the stellar phenomena that would ravage other Tomb Worlds, the Maynark’s crownworlds slept largely undisturbed as the barrenness of space they now colonized offered little of interest to those races that would eventually emerge after the Necrons. To watch over the Maynark, the Silent King had appointed his own guardians, the Triarch Praetorian to protect his cherished ad valuable warriors. Due to the Maynark’s own paranoia, these guardian intelligences and their Canoptek servitors kept a close eye on the neighbouring worlds and on the rare occasion someone ventured into the Maynark’s domain, they were met with violence. The Maynark’s Praetorians were not merely content with eliminating the trespassers themselves, but actively sought and destroyed the nearest population center or star vessel from which the trespassers had come. To achieve these goals, the Triarch Praetorians did not rely solely on the Canoptek killing engines at their disposal, but time and time again awakened entire Necron Phalanxes to ensure their victory. This overt aggression could have considerably backfired, calling down a greater wrath than the sleeping Tomb Worlds and their guardians might have been able to handle, but thankfully for the Maynark, the short sightedness of the younger races and the isolation of their domain ensured that no such threat emerged. Even the greatest treath to the Maynark, the birth of the Imperium of Mankind and its Great Crusade did not suspect what lay slumbering beneath the worlds of the later Leyak and Orpheus Sector.

For millions of years, the Canoptek guardians and their Praetorians watched over the Maynark, waiting for the Silent King’s command to reawaken the Maynark. At the preordained time and moment, these constructs would deactivate the Tomb Worlds stasis-crypts and summon the Undying Legions of the Maynark to march again. This moment was chosen to coincide with a stellar phenomena of such magnitude and accuracy that it could not be missed by the crude intelligence of the Canoptek guardians: the death of a sun, or rather of two suns, for the Caracol-system was a binary star-system. No Necrons slumbered in this system for it had been one of the great domains of their ennemies, the C’tans, and the location of one of their powerful devices they had used during the War in Heaven: the Dolmen Gate - a powerful artefact able to transfer energy from the material plain into the Immaterium. The Silent King planned on the Caracol-system’s death to shatter the Dolmen Gate and cause such an unusual Warp phenomena that it could not be misinterprated by his servitors. This very specific event would mark the Reawakening of the Maynark. By the Imperial Calendar, this event ocurred in 990.M41, although the reason for Caracol’s two suns to go supernova way ahead of their natural life span remains unknown. Was it a mere rogue accident of nature or somehow ordained by the hand of the Silent King? Or did possibly older, far darker powers mettle with it? None can say for sure. The suns’ fiery death shattered the planets of the Caracol-systems, destroying the last ruins of the C’tans presence, but even as it was destroyed, the Dolmen Gate converted the fiery death into pure energy that was magnified and transferred into the Warp as a great bow-wave, rippling its surface like a stone thrown into a pond and calming the face of the Aether. This ripple in the Warp purely snuffed out the Warp turbulences that had been plagueing the Orpheus Sector for centuries, with the notable exception of the particularly fierce Warp Storm known as the Howling Vortex to the Sector’s East. Hundreds of Astrophats burned out and thousands perished as their ships were broken in two and ripped apart by frenzied daemons, but the Necrons did not care for these death. For all intents and purposes, the ordained time had come : the Maynark needed to be awakened.

Slaughter
On distant worlds, the stasis-crypts of the Maynarkh were opened, and the Dynasty’s true fate revealed. Thousands of Necrons awoke from their near-eternal slumber howling for the blood and flesh of the living, undone by the Curse of the Flayer. On every Tomb World, these insane automata gathered together as ravening packs of Flayed Ones, desperately seeking living flesh for their claws to carve, but bound to find none. Other warriors and Necrons quickly swelled their ranks succumbing to the Curse in a matter of hours, days, weeks or months. However many thousands of Necron Warriors, Lychguards and other construct emerged unscathed from their stasis-crypts and dutifully assembled, waiting for their Crypteks and Overlords to emerge. Yet without leadership, these warriors simply stood by, waiting for their masters to return to them.

The higher echelons of the Maynarkh appeared less affected by the Curse, their bloodlust as living creatures before the biotransference project leaving them perhaps a measure of immunity, as if sensing some strange kinship, the Curse of the Flayer had not entirely taken root. Some had indeed succumbed to it, but far more of the nobles and Crypteks now bore the Curse of the Flayer deeply embedded within their cybernetic consciousness. While the Curse did not control them, it had however corrupted the personality of many members of the Royal Courts : martial honour had been forgotten and simple and brutal extermination had replaced the glory of war. Awakening from the Great Sleep, many of the lesser nobles recoiled from what they had become. The vague hope they had shared of perhaps returning to an existence of flesh and bone irremediably crushed. Truly, they were lost and many descended into delusion and madness. Some embraced the nihilistic tendencies and the hatred of all life they harboured within their cybernetic cortexes and gave themselves over for body modification, becoming Destroyers, while other embraced the carnage yet to come. The Maynarkh Dynasty truly stood on the brink of tearing itself apart, nearly falling in a spiral of self-destructive anarchy, until the last and most heavily protected of the stasis-crypts opened, releasing the Maynarkh’s true ruler and Phaerakh : Xun'bakyr, the Mother of Oblivion. With her came the Maynarkh’s most powerful and fearsome leaders, Maktlan Kutlakh the "World Killer", lazolt the Faceless, Nemesor of Tayroc, and Ixatothek, the Jackal Regent, Lord-hunter of the void. Together, these powerful individuals reassessed control of the Maynarkh and kept it from destroying itself.

Known Client Dynasties

 * The Vralekth Dynasty - The Imperium encountered the Vralekth on the former Agri-World of Hydroghast, from which they are supposed to originate from. As Hydroghast is an Ocean World, the Vralekth stasis-tombs had slumbered for millenia in the deepest abysses of Hydroghast’s oceans, the great depth sheltering them from prying eyes. As a side-effect of this aquatic terrain, the warriors of the Vralekth distinguish themselves by a high degree of corrosion on their Necrodermis, although this seemingly did not impact on their combat effectiveness. It remains however unclear if the Vralekth are truly a client dynasty to the Maynarkh, or a possible scion of offshoot of the more powerful Maynarkh.

Known Entities of the Maynarkh
Informations regarding the leaders of the Maynarkh Dynasty are scarce at best, as currently the Imperium has positively identified only one of these figures, Maktlan Kutlakh as he led the armies of the Maynarkh against the Orpheus Sector. What little information has been gathered was gained through the study of ancient steles and fragments of masonry of ancient xenos temples, believed to have been erected by the Necrontyr.
 * Phaerakh Xun'bakyr, the Mother of Oblivion - Believed to be the supreme leader of the Maynark Dynasty. The association of both names strongly suggest "Phaerakh" to be the female equivalent of the more common title of Phaeron, which would effectively make the Maynarkh the first known Dynasty to be ruled by a female Overlord.
 * Maktlan Kutlakh, the World Killer - The entity designated as Kutlakh is currently believed to be the highest ranking Nemesor of the Maynarkh Dynasty. His official title, Maktlan loosely translates as "the Extinguisher of Life", but Kutlakh also carries other titles such as "the Charnel Lord" and "the God-Slayer" which mark his prominent position within the Dynasty. Kutlakh was positively identified as leading the Necron troops during the Battle of Amarah, during which he was confronted by the notoriously brutal and deadly Chapter Master of the Minotaurs’ Space Marine Chapter, Asterion Moloc. Although Moloc succeeded in wounding Kuthlakh, given he regenerative capacities of the Necron Necrodermis, Kutlakh is certainly still at the head of the Legions of the Maynarkh as they inexorably advance through the Orpheus Sector.
 * Tlazolt the Faceless, Nemesor of Tayroc
 * Ixatothek, the Jackal Regent, Lord-hunter of the void
 * Toholk the Blinded, Master of the Eternal Engines - Toholk the Blinded holds the position of Arch-Cryptek of the Maynarkh, for he is a masterly gifted weaponsmith and armourer. Toholk is obsessed with destruction, craftig ever more devastating weapon which have often served as valuable technologies to be traded with other Dynasties. Yet his genious and notoriety have caused many griefs amongst both the Royal Courts and the Crypteks of the Maynark which have tried on numerous occasions to dispose of Toholk. Even his true masters fear Toholk and have crippled his mechanical body, while his mind has be shackled with the most powerful commandprotocols at their disposal. Toholk greatest and latest achievement is a celestial scanning and temporal prediction device called the Smoking Mirror which allows Toholk to predict the future.