Night Scythe

The Night Scythe is the Necrons’ favoured tool of invasion, a variant of the Doom Scythe that replaces some of the fighter’s heaviest weaponry in favour of a troop transport capacity. This is not to say that a Night Scythe is in any way defenceless – quite the opposite. With its turret-mounted Tesla Destructors and the nerve-shredding shriek of its engines, the Night Scythe is a formidable fighter craft in its own right.

Role
Should a Phaeron wish to reach out his hand and reclaim a sundered planet, his first wave of attack inevitably includes a fleet of Night Scythes. Manoeuvrable enough to evade incoming for from orbital defence platforms and swift enough to outpace mustering defenders, Night Scythes can ghost through a defence perimeter to deploy invasion forces directly at the heart of key enemy installations and strategic locations. Once a foothold has been established, coordinates are relayed to the main army; enabling Monoliths and other Necron forces to teleport into position, and the invasion to begin.

Night Scythes are piloted by a Necron Immortal who is hard-wired into his aircraft. Because of this robotic nature, the pilot is uninhibited by mortal frailties and is able to steer to the craft to higher speeds and perform more extreme manoeuvres than those pilots of flesh and blood. Likewise, a Night Scythe is also a small spacecraft that fulfils the attack craft role in Necron fleets, despite the lack of a cockpit to protect the pilot; for what protection does the machine need?

Unlike the armoured carriers employed by other races, the Night Scythe does not have a transport compartment as such. Instead, it deploys its troops by means of a captive wormhole whose far end is anchored on a distant Tomb World. Through this is less flexible than a Monolith’s eternity gate, it does allow a Night Scythe to mimic the battlefield role of a more conventional transport vehicle without jeopardising the existence of its assigned squad. If the Night Scythe is destroyed, its payload squad is simply isolated from the battle until an alternate means of deployment can be established. Though this invariably prevents the squad from taking part in the immediate battle, this is preferable to them being destroyed outright as they can join the campaign’s later stages.

Night Scythes are often employed as far-ranging scout ships, tasked with making contact with other Tomb Worlds or searching out lost Necron planets suitable for reclamation. On worlds where the interlopers are either few in number or primitive in nature, a Night Scythe spearheads a ruthless subjugation. On worlds where other life forms have taken strong root, the pilot a Night Scythe clandestinely performs probes and biopsies of the inhabitants, preying on isolated settlements and convoys whilst it searches for clues that will identify the inhabiting race’s suitability for apotheosis. Such tests are long and exhaustive, and the pilot is often forced to dissect entire townships in order to harvest sufficient data. On a particularly promising planet, a Night Scythe’s pilot may go as far as to transport living samples back to its Tomb World for further inspection by its Crypteks. Most such subjects don not survive the scientific method that follows, but are instead stripped down molecule by molecule and neuron by neuron. A few abductees may, however, be returned to their homes; although in these cases they are most likely implanted with Mindshackle Scarabs or other control mechanisms to enable them to function as unsuspecting spies and saboteurs who will pave the for an imminent invasion.

Armament
A Night Scythe is armed and equipped with the following:
 * Twin-linked Tesla Destructor – A Night Scythe’s primary weapon is its twin-linked Tesla Destructor, which is mainly an anti-personnel weapon though only the most heavily armed tanks can risk its wrath with utter impunity. The Tesla Destructor employs much the same lightning-arc technology as found in the smaller Tesla Cannons and Tesla Carbines. Its energy discharges of crackling lightning can wreak terrible harm on living targets; searing their flesh, melting their armour and boiling their blood. Furthermore, the Tesla bolts fired feed off energy released by the destruction they cause, often meaning that the lightning becomes more ferocious with each arc. So powerful are the blasts from a Tesla Destructor, and such is its shocking rapidity of fire, that the lightning fired is capable of leaping from target to target before they are finally grounded; leaving a trail of smoldering carnage across a broad swathe of the battlefield behind them.
 * Wormhole Portal – All Night Scythes are fitted with a captive wormhole portal bound into their lower hull. This portal serves as a dimensional passageway through which Necrons can move through from their Tomb World to the target destination once the Night Scythe has landed. Because of the nature of this transport ‘compartment’, the Necrons ‘within’ do not suffer any ill effects if the Night Scythe is destroyed. This portal is also capable of allowing jump infantry, such as Triarch Praetorians with Gravity Displacement Packs, and Jetbikes, such as Tomb Blades, to pass through, as their bulky nature is not restricted by a small ‘interior space’ that is the norm in the transports of other races.
 * Necrodermis - The armour of Night Scythes is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapon online again.