Sigil of the Maynarkh Dynasty
Toholk, also now known as Toholk the Blinded, is the Necron Arch-Cryptek of the Maynarkh Dynasty, and is a being of diabolical ingenuity whose particular genius lent itself to the creation of vast amounts of war machinery for his bellicose dynasty. Indeed, his designs and schematics were even distributed by the Triarch across the Necron dynasties in the past, in order to aid the Necron legions in their campaigns against the Old Ones during the War in Heaven. The Canoptek Tomb Sentinel is one such creation of his, and was one of the last he designed before the Necron race underwent the Great Sleep. Even before his transformation into a cold machine-existence, Toholk was without care for the lives his creations took, or indeed the use to which they were put -- only that each invention was a greater triumph of destruction than the last. This maxim was pushed to the extent of him testing new weapons and war machines first-hand on the battlefield as well as on captive subjects. Toholk’s hubris made him many enemies both amongst rival Crypteks and among the Necron Lords of the Maynarkh Royal Court, who were jealous of his fame and notoriety. Despite this, he has survived many plots and assassination attempts made against him and prefers to trap his would-be murderers in Hyperphase Prison Matrices for later disposal or use in further weapons testing.
History
After the fall of the Old Ones eons ago at the end of the War in Heaven, Toholk became even more disconnected from reality and shifted his research to the paths of Chronomancy, becoming obsessed with the intricacies of cause and effect, and dreamed insanely of the destruction of time himself. His masters, however, punished him for straying from the fulfilment of their desires and his "lack of foresight," and shackled and subjected him to the most grievous tortures imaginable, leaving his android form blinded and broken, and hardwiring control parameters into his mind forcing him to obey and preventing him from properly repairing his own body in punishment. The conflict between the Maynarkh mind-shackles and his own obsessive compulsions within his consciousness has further splintered the Chronomancer’s mind, but this has not stopped him from creating what he considers his greatest work -- a temporal prediction and celestial scanning engine he calls the Smoking Mirror, which has served the Maynarkh Dynasty well during their recent conquests in the Orpheus Sector during the Orphean War. Toholk’s process of continual refinement of this chronomantic device, however, has a far darker goal than even the cold machine intellects of the Necron Overlords of Maynarkh can guess at…
Toholk now views the world through a shifting veil of temporal energy fields and the twisting skein of dimensional membranes, and can transmit his visions to the Necrons around him during battle to aid them in combat. Also, as the Arch-Cryptek of the Maynarkh Dynasty, Toholk's skill and experience in fashioning and augmenting weapons and machineries of war is unequalled. Within those devices and eternal engines he particularly favours, he has implanted temporal regenerative systems -- works of arcane science that are capable of preternatural feats of repair, with time itself seeming to reverse and restore near-wrecked war machines to a pristine state of function
Wargear
- Necrodermis - Like all Necrons, Toholk's body is built from the self-repairing living Necrodermis metal, granting him the unholy resilience common to his kind.
- Aeonstave - Utilised by Crypteks that are masters of Chronomancy, the crystalline sapphire head of an Aeonstave generates a kind of low-level stasis field that contains a massive chronal charge. With each blow from the Aeonstave, the energies unleashed will encapsulate and trap the Cryptek's enemy in a bubble of slow-time.
- Timesplinter Cloak - The most accomplished of Chronomancers can weave together disparate strands of time, forming an unassailable shield against any attack that does not originate from the time stream corresponding to the precise moment of impact.
- Transdimensional Beamer - Toholk always carries a Transdimensional Beamer as a sidearm. This Necron weapon was originally designed as a convenient method of banishing unwanted debris, machinery and failed experiments from Tomb Worlds and battlefields into a pocket dimension outside of the normal space-time continuum. However, a Transdimensional Beamer can be used just as easily to exile and banish foes to a long and horrifying death from starvation in the same extra-dimensional space.
Sources
- Imperial Armour Volume Twelve – The Fall of Orpheus, pp. 110, 121