[Being a study of the horrendous war between the Old Ones and the Necrontyr]
THE PARIAHS
Pariahs have been a recent concern within the Imperium. They are soulless
mutants that have a negative presence within the Warp. Pariahs lack the light
that all other living creatures have. And for that reason, they are usually
cold, unemotional creatures that show no sign of feeling anything.
It was first thought that the Pariahs were a natural occurrence, an odd mutation
within the human genome that just happed to produce a soulless person. But the
truth is far from this.
Pariahs are humans whose genetic structure has been altered by Necrontyr agents
posing as medical workers and other trusted persons who have easy access to many
people, especially women who are pregnant. A child's genetic code will be remade
while he is still in the womb, through means known only to the Necrontyr. There
is no noticeable effect on the women bearing the child at first, but soon she
begins to feel discomfort, as do those around her, as the unnatural creature
stirring inside her begins to exert a negative warp presence.
As the child grows into maturity and adulthood, his negative warp presence grows
larger. The person will naturally be shunned by those around him, as his
presence disrupts their own warp presence and causes a sickness in their own
soul. Those who are more tapped into the warp are more affected, meaning any
psyker will immediately get tremendous headaches and, after long periods of
time, suffer traumatic shock as their link to the warp is cut off. This most
often results in the death of the psyker.
Pariahs are loners, obviously. They have no place in human society. But the
Culexus temple of assassins, formed to hunt down psykers, is a perfect home for
such abominations. It is little known that the true purpose of the creation of
the Culexus Temple was to give the Necrontyr yet another tool to use against the
powerful psykers of the Old Ones and the Eldar. It is for this reason that
Pariahs are found more often than one would think possible and brought back to
the temple world to train.
But a shocking event has happened recently. The Culexus temple world has been
knocked from its orbit by a freak nova. The Alaitoc craftworld's Farseers
located the temple world and have gained possession of it, seeking to destroy it
along with its seething mass of Pariahs. However, the Farseers have also looked
down all paths of the future and recognize that the destruction of the world
would release a horrible amount of negative warp energy, rending a hole in warp
space and wiping out the Alaitoc craftworld.
The Necrontyr are not finished yet. They have begun to round up Pariahs
directly, bringing them back to Necrontyr worlds. Once they are in the custody
of the Necrontyr, new bodies are made for them, bodies of metal. The essence of
the Pariahs is transferred into these bodies in the same method that the
Necrontyr's life essence was transferred into their new bodies. These new
creations, still bearing the title Pariah, are given powerful phase weapons and
gauss weapons and charged with the task of seeking out and destroying psykers
and daemons. Few Pariahs exist within the Necrontyr armies to date, but this
seems to be changing quickly. The Old Ones and the Eldar, ever alert to
impending threats, have sensed the increasing number of Necrontyr Pariahs, and
are now moving to destroy any human Pariahs they find before the Necrontyr can
capture them and put them to use.