40k Lore, Flesh Hungry Machines! Necron Flayed Ones! 

As a wise man said: "Actually they are pretty friendly, they just need some help peeling potatoes, unfortunately for you, you are the potato." -Sseth

I always thought it was the Necron trying to "feel" like a biological organism. "I miss being flesh and blood so I'll borrow this guy's".

They beat cancer, they beat the Old Ones, they beat their own gods, but they couldn't beat dementia.

GW: "40k is child-friendly and for everyone. Buy your child some models!" Citizen: "What about him?" *points at a flayed one* GW: "Oh, we have no idea who that is." Flayed one: "Look at me, brother." GW: *sweats profusely* Flayed one: "LOOK AT ME!"

I prefer the curse backstory for the flayed ones, and isolation for the destroyers

"Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away…forever". -Solution to 65 million years of isolation...

I need a 40k horror game where you’re fighting Genestealers but occasionally you see something move in the shadows and hear the screams in the distance. You only see the gory remains of mutilated monsters as the flayed ones do their work

After singing 99 bottles of beer for 65 millions years would warp ANYONES mind

Necron goes: "It puts the lubricant on the skin or it gets the flail again."

One of the first 40k stories I ever read was "Damnos", one of the old Space Marine Battles books, about the Ultramarines fighting to defend a frozen mining world from the Necron tombs that had just woken up underneath it's surface. And in that story, was Sahtah the Enfleshed, a Flayer lord. Parts of the story were told from his perspective as he was unleashed by his fellows to hunt a squad of Ultramarines in the planet's highlands. The story of Sahtah has stuck with me as one of the darkest elements of 40k lore I've ever read, as it charts his descent from reawakening as a half-coherent madman, down into a feral beast. His mind is filled with flashes of his previous existence from before biotransference, mixed with the insane visions of a Flayer utopia - an endless palace built entirely of flesh and bone, where blood flows in rivers and guts hang like bunting. By the time he meets his well-deserved end he can not even remember his own name, and is no better than the pack of Flayers he commands - Sahtah is gone, and only The Enfleshed remains. What's most interesting is how his tale demonstrates the idea of the Flayer curse being a disease - the other lords talk of being "infected" by his mere presence, and the collapse of his mind is akin to how a disease would spread throughout a host, corrupting and destroying his consciousness bit by bit. Add this to the (mercifully short and somewhat vague) descriptions of what happens to his victims, and you have a far more terrifying tale than anything I've ever read about Chaos Daemons or Dark Elves. They're evil, sure, but for them it's a still a conscious choice. Sahtah isn't even fully aware of what, where or who he is, never mind what he's doing or why.

Because necrons needed another reason to be terrifying

"Boarding successful: flayed ones are feasting." Just one of the lines I get from Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 when boarding enemy ships that I kinda feel bad about now. I'm not gonna stop or anything though.

My head canon always was that some part of their memory remained. So they understand that their body is supposed to be flesh and skin so they are trying to “right the wrong”

Can't get enough horror and disgusting stuff in these times. Reminding us how nice and fluffy our planet really is. =))

The original Flayed Ones origin story is basically “Eventually, Kars Stopped Thinking.”

"If you are the scariest thing on the battlefield, you will be shot, often, with the biggest guns available." And, even Exterminatus won' stop them. Or even really bother them.

"How are the Flayed Ones capable of X?" Well, I dunno, ask the Orks.

Arch: "whilst the Necrodermis may not be able to create a functioning asshole..." Me: what about Trazyn? Arch: "Oh...riiiiight".

Peasants: _"Those machines are covered in flayed human skin, run for your lives!"_ Nightlords: *_"ARE WE A JOKE TO YOU?!"_*

I like how nothing in 40K is perfect. If any other sci-fi series came up with the Necrons they would be entirely invulnerable except for one glaring weakness that a plucky band of heroes could exploit to perfectly neutralize or destroy the Necrons. In other words, they would be perfectly invincible until they become so vulnerable that it only takes a D&D party worth of people to defeat an entire species. In 40K, the Necrons couldn't do something crazy, like sleeping since the time that dinosaurs still roamed, without simple mechanical failures dooming huge portions of their stasis-bound populace. At the same time, Jeff Goldblum can't write a computer virus that would neutralize all of the Necrons like he did to the aliens in the OG Independence Day; a C'tan tried that and it still didn't work!

I'm looking forward to the book that has the Warhammer Adventures kids finally meet a Flayed One.

For my part, I liked the old lore. The Necrons were perfectly suited to being the cold, inscrutable war machines left over from a long-forgotten war that they started out as. 40K has plenty of room for unexplainable horrors, but so often devolves to supervillains instead. I like the curse explanation, too. It explains why all the Flayed Ones exhibit the same type of madness and act the same way much more clearly than the "faulty stasis" explanation.

Necrons: “We fear nothing sentient. But those things-“ (gestures to Flayers) “They scare us.” Rest of the galaxy: *SWEATS*

Just imagine : Being a guardsman in the midst of a battle against strange mecanical xenos and you see one of them happily splishplashing in the remainq of Bobby, ogryn mascot of the regiment, that would be a valid reason to consider retirement by self termination

A longing for flesh, that they no longer have.

Arch in the past: "But hey, details!" Arch now: "De facto"

You ever wonder why foreskin merchants are so rich? Well now you know

For the "awake for countless generations" consider that what if the same flaw that stopped them from sleeping also didn't abate the sense of hunger they should have lost when they became robots? That would explain the flayed ones perfectly.

Arch -" Social distancing among the Necrons" bit literally killed me right on the spot from laughter :D

"Sometimes I pull it so hard I rip the skin" - random Flayed One

Arch: "[A] deranged monster so horrifying that even the undead, genocidal, machine Necrons find them to be a little too much. I speak, of course, of..." Me: Epic Games executives? Arch: "...the Flayed Ones."

Only in the 40k universe wearing someone else's skin is even seen as scary by CHAOS

7:40 my theory is that at some point during status they got an itchy and wanted to scratch but couldn't so it drove them so mad as to want to scratch that itch on every fleshy surface within reach.

I would think the easiest backstory for them would be something as simple as "they have a slight memory of being in living bodies and it's an instinctual attempt at being in it again

Almost makes me wish there was some sort of Tyranid opposite to this, The Geared Ones! >:D Crazed Tyranids who waste precious biomass constantly attempting to integrate random bits of machinery into their bodies while seemingly unconnected to the Hive Mind. O.O The worst part is that SOMETIMES, they actually succeed. ^^; Nothing says 'leave this planet right now' like a somehow self-reloading Ork shoota merged to the head of a Gaunt or even a Carnifexe with Necron gauss weapons for eyes. @.@ Possibly some botched Hive that infected and linked so many Mechanus agents at once their combined belief in The Omnissiah twisted the Tyranids normal instincts. *laughs*

Arch knows more about physics and technology than I do, but my understanding of an 'inertialess drive' is that it's not that different from how Star Trek warp fields and Mass Effect fields from the eponymous game are supposed to work: that it artificially reduces a ship's mass to near zero, allowing other propulsion systems to have a much greater effect than they ordinarily would. Presumably, with the right set of RCS thrusters, you could pull off some awfully eerie maneuvers: stopping on a dime, right-angle turns, sudden changes in speed from a few hundred mph to tens of thousands with no obvious period of acceleration - the sort of bizarre jumping around you sometimes see in UFO reports.

**

I have a hunger, that only hands will satisfy - Flayed One C'arl

I want a series of 40k novels (or even short stories) where the setup is a basic colony dealing with some small skirmish on the periphery, raiders, tau fuckery, small heretic cult, wayward pack of flayed ones. Shot happens then on the final act/paragraph/chapter it’s just about getting a last desperate report out to the imperium and sometime later a bureaucrat/servitor reading that report then filing it under “trivial event, re-seed colony”. do this 4-5 times in different places then at an unspecified point make that planet important.

One thing I like about the Necrons: It's entirely possible, if not likely, to find a Necron Overlord that's entirely civil, polite, eloquent and even erudite, and yet they also employ what is possibly the most twisted and horrifying, literal nightmare fuel unit in all of 40k.

PETA: “It’s cruel and unusual for the space wolves to wear fur! Why is Games Workshop supporting this?” GW: *Produces an entire group of Necrons that literally flay the flesh off of their enemies and wear it.*

Strange as this may be, I've discovered that my newborn son falls asleep, without fail, while listening to Arch. Admittedly, the stomach full of milk and the fact he's lying prone on my belly may play a role, but I'd like to think hearing Arch discuss 40k has a hugely mollifying effect on my son. Thanks for everything!

Deflector shield that bends space and "pushes" everything in front of it harmlessly away. That's how you could explain the frictionless drive.

I'm voting the curse myself. "I have no mouth and I must scream" sounds more like the craziness that would overcome the destroyers. A destroyer has no reason whatsoever to it's trigger happy nature. A flayed one seams far too.. well, directed in how it kills. There's an aim to it's actions, and that sounds like purposeful curse territory.

2:35 -- "We don't talk about what gets me off, okay?" -- Flayed One interrupted mid-flensing

In dawn of war, these things just delete morale

Referring to the daemonculaba so early means you enjoyed Luetin09’s take on the lore in that regard. I tip my hat to you.

You should've arranged to have an antivirus sponsor like Malwarebytes for this video. Nothing like infected murder-robots to persuade someone to invest in malware protection.

I like the idea that the Necron Lords designed the flayed ones when they came in contact with humanity. They were designed specifically to murder humans.

Having a drive that allows you to travel through space without friction really isn't that big of a deal considering that space is mostly empty, leaving _very_ little friction to slow you down.

Destroyers: "Awww look their making elaborate patchworks, how adorable."

In dark souls 1 and 2, I cosplay as a Flayed one.

A shame they didn’t make an appearance in Warhammer Adventures™ but I guess gauss flayers are quicker

Arch: I find flayed ones disturbing Me: Pretty

You would think that 65000000 years would drive someone mad but there's probably that one Necron going "65000000 bottles of beer on the wall!"

"Two hundred and nine trillion bottles of beer on the wall, two hundred and nine trillion bottles of beer..."

My guess? I am sure one of those lore reasons play a part, but I recon it is also minor fragments of the tiny dregs of souls that remain within them that desperately desire to become alive again. And to feel even the smallest, remotest sense of that, they cut up fleshy things, bathe in their innards and wear their skins. That's my guess atl. And I believe that is also how it manages to infect others. The tiny dregs of soul remains in other necrons get affected by those extreme soul fragments and are effectively being "corrupted" by them in that sense of the word.

I picture the Flayed Ones like that serial killer from Silence of the Lambs.

They're one of the easier enemies to kill in mechanicus though.

The flayed virus in twice dead king was very well done

A thought for the inertialess drive, maybe the vessel goes partially out of phase with space time. Necrons are known to have access to the ability to access different dimensions.

They are basically the Ghouls/Zombies to the other Necrons Skeletons.

I love your content arch! All your lore videos are so entertaining, so informative and amazing!please dont stop doing lore videos!!!

when necron destroyers find flayed ones."We got new puppies!"

"It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose."

The flayed ones went into stasis with only one movie. They had put 'Silence of the Lamb' on repeat for 65 million years. Now they are running around desperately trying to find a bucket to put the lotion in.

I remember the quote: "They were given to the flayed ones, to practice their ghoulish art upon."

Imagine waking up one day as a metal skeleton. Anyone would try to look for some clothing.

I just had the mental image of a destroyer coming upon a flayed one doing his thing and speaking in arch his voice exactly what he said at 19;00 before jetting off.

Yay new 40k lore video from my favorite lore youtuber. Thank you Archy boi.

I want to get into Wh40k so I just recently got the Necrons codex and as soon as I saw the Flayed Ones they intrigued me soo much the idea of them having an unending hunger for flesh and how they shovel gore and blood into there mouths only for them not to taste anything or even to feel the sensation of there claws against skin is...brutal I always heard that wh40k was grim dark but holy cow they ain’t lying!

The C'Tan Flayer:middlefinger and creates the flayed ones The silent king: Social distenceing

flesh goes yeet

I think their warping ability is a perversion on the standard ability to "warp away" that all Necron beings possess. What once was a controlled (and indeed coordinated) escape method becomes a shotgun style hopping technique. Moving from place to place with borderline no control over where they end up.

Question: when the silent king saw that the first of his people came out not looking so er... alive, why didnt he just order them to stop?

Arch; "The warp does not exist in our world" My demon of Tzeentch; "Good. That will allow our plans to progress unnoticed."

"hey, hey, you. look at me. i'm the commissar now"

Flesh!

Lensmen actually makes pretty extensive use of Inertialess Drives for their FTL travel... Granted those stories were made in the 30s, so the concept probably hadn't been discredited yet, but an explanation of it I've seen is that when a ship is hit with any sort of force (say, a laser beam) it's essentially just "pushed" out of the way. You almost have to hold the ship in place with tractor beams and THEN fire on it to do any significant damage.

Flayed ones were my introduction to wh40k lol, love this shit

Good one Arch - as always. Although I wonder one thing you mentioned few clips earlier. Why does the Tyranids avoid Necrons tomb world. Ok - no biomass there, but stil. Maybe you could create a mini series about individual C'tans? Like about the Ordo Assasinorum (btw wthat are the death cult assasins then)

The version of the "inertia-less" drive I heard was that it is based on Necron phasing tech. You phase half-way between one dimension and the next (or whatever the explanation was) and then step on the gas. Because you are phased, you won't collide with anything and with the inertia-less drive you can still accelerate to infinite speed instantly or stop on a dime just as fast.

Thank you Arch. I've been hoping you'd cover the Flayed Ones in particular for quite some time.

A mindless dark desire driven by the most mere haunting wisp of the memory of flesh.

It is my favourite time of the day when Arch posts a lore video

Reminds me of a short animation where a sister of battle is brutally killed by a necron.

A 40k horror game involving the flayed ones would be both really good and terrifying

Funny you did this right after I did some reading on these guys. Also, yay, more Necrons!

I think it's telling that the Flayed Ones were terrifying weirdos (to put it mildly) to the Necrons even in their older lore, where they had no will or intelligence of their own That should tell you something about how messed up they were

I always took it they want their living bodies back and after millions of years went crazy and decided to wear the flesh of living things to feel alive

they must be Khorne's nightmare. They do all the killing and gore the lord of skulls enjoys and yet he does not get a tiny bit of power from all the bloodshed done by them.

As for escaping when nearly-destroyed, I suspect that's basically a perversion of the same tech that allows any Necron to teleport away from a battlefield. The foundation of doing so is there already, so all that's needed is to twist that mechanism beyond any (save one perhaps) Necron lord's preference.

Khorne: exists Flayed Ones: *YOU GOT BLOOD ON YOUR THRONE??*

Lol, this is coming right after I destroyed the Imperial guard fortress in Dark crusade, swarming it with hundreds upon hundreds flayed ones. Kinda creepy actually.

The inertia-less drive could use phasing technology, which the Necrons use a lot

I'm loving these guys from the description your giving. Oooooh, the unceasing satisfaction.

The problem with the 65 mil years theory is that you wouldn't get he same result in EVERY necron that's affected. Some would be flayers... other might not be... others might just get suicidal or something of that sort...

Nice to see my favorite Dark Crusade unit front and center. Nothing like teleporting in an entire company of these fuckers on an enemy's base out of nowhere

"As far as we know" -Arch 2020 mere weeks before the Eye of Terror spotted by astrologists.

Necron flayer in front of a mirror: "Would you kill me? I would kill me. I would kill me sooo hard"