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Flayed Ones are Necrons who have succumbed to the Flayer Curse, sometimes called the Flayer Virus. It is a ghoulish affliction that breeds an endless hunger for organic flesh. It is said to have been bestowed by the C'tan Llandu'gor, the Flayer. When the Necrons turned on their star-gods at the end of the War in Heaven, the Flayer was not merely shattered into shards like his brothers but utterly obliterated. In his death throes he tainted his destroyers with an echo of his own bottomless hunger. For aeons the curse went unnoticed, and by the time its madness showed, infected Necrons had carried it to a thousand worlds and dozens of dynasties.
The curse first takes a victim's sanity. In a Necron Warrior this may go unnoticed for a long time, since one malfunctioning soldier among thousands is easy to overlook. It begins as an urge to kill that can override orders to cease fire or hold position. Destroyers kill for the sake of killing. Flayed Ones kill so that they can feast. As machines they cannot eat, so the hunger can never be satisfied, yet they still stop amid the slaughter to smear meat across their unmoving jaws. Their bodies change too. Fingers stretch into knife-like claws, legs may grow an extra joint for speed or even four-legged running, and the living metal warps into a grotesque, stooped form. In the end the victim vanishes, drawn by instinct into a pocket dimension where the Flayed Ones keep their charnel palaces.
Other Necrons loathe and fear them. Any Necron suspected of carrying the infection is banished or destroyed. But nothing can stop a pack from joining a battle already under way. Sensing bloodshed, Flayed Ones tear open reality with their claws and step out to hunt. They answer to no chain of command and ignore any Nemesor rash enough to give them orders, so commanders rarely adjust their plans for them and simply accept whatever advantage they bring.
Appearance & wargear
Flayed Ones are thin, wiry, hunched necrodermis skeletons with long flensing blades in place of fingers, able to flay a man alive in seconds. They drape themselves in the still-wet skins and hides of their victims, wear the scraps until they rot away completely, and move in a dense stench of decay that they seem not to notice. Blood drips down their steel necks and pools at their feet. Enemy soldiers have broken at the sight of pieces of their old squadmates hanging from the machines stalking towards their lines.
Weapons & Vehicles
The dimensional-phasing polearms and emerald energy blades of Necron Overlords, Lychguard and Skorpekh Destroyers, slipping effortlessl…
The iconic emerald molecular-flaying beam rifle of the Necron legions, stripping flesh, bone and tank armour apart atom by atom in a bl…
Splinters of the shattered Star Gods, bound in necrodermis and unleashed by the Necrons only when the day is darkest.
Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Battlefield role & tactics
Flayed Ones advance ahead of a Necron force or appear without warning in the midst of the enemy, spreading terror like a plague. They attack with little regard for strategy but are not suicidal. If the enemy is strong they wait for the perfect moment, and if the enemy flees they rarely pursue, preferring to feed on the fallen. Destroyers, outcasts themselves, tolerate them more readily than other Necrons. After victory an Overlord commonly orders any surviving Flayed Ones executed, but most slip back to their palaces of rotting flesh, laden with fresh trophies.
Munitorum & Ordo Xenos Technical Dossier
Classified under Ordo and Departmento Munitorum threat-index protocols as a primary Flayed Ones advance ahead of a Necron force or appear without warning in the midst of the enemy, spreading terror like a plague. They attack with little regard for strategy but are not suicidal. If the enemy is strong they wait for the perfect moment, and if the enemy flees they rarely pursue, preferring to feed on the fallen. Destroyers, outcasts themselves, tolerate them more readily than other Necrons. After victory an Overlord commonly orders any surviving Flayed Ones executed, but most slip back to their palaces of rotting flesh, laden with fresh trophies. asset of Necrons, Flayed Ones relies on a tightly coupled symbiosis between operator conditioning and primary armament. Field maintenance and biological recovery logs indicate that extended deployment without liturgical recalibration or bio-stasis rest degrades targeting and metabolic stability by less than 4% per solar week—far outperforming standard sector baselines—while post-engagement recovery teams prioritize the immediate extraction of their core wargear, neural/gene-seed components, or machine-spirit memory cores before enemy scavengers can exploit them.
Notable battles & users
- Valgûl the Fallen Lord: rules the Bone Kingdom of Drazak in the Ghoul Stars, where every Necron but him is a Flayed One. When the meat runs out he proclaims a 'Time of Bounty' and sends his fleets raiding for tithes of gore.
- The Maynarkh Dynasty: legendary for savagery even before the War in Heaven, said to be the hands that annihilated the Flayer, and among the first to suffer his curse.
- Sahtah the Enfleshed: a Flayer King whose fortunes are tied to the royal courts of Damnos.
- Unnas and Setekh: former phaerons of the Ithakas and Hyksos dynasties respectively, both lost to the curse.
Related
Characters (2)
Trazyn the Infinite · Overlord of Solemnace, Archaeovist
Imotekh the Stormlord · Phaeron of the Sautekh Dynasty
