What Are the C'tan? — The Star Gods Explained

The C’tan — also known as the Star Gods, the Star Vampires, or the Yngir (in Aeldari tradition) — are among the oldest and most powerful entities in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. They are beings of pure energy who originally fed on the radiation of stars, drifting through the cosmos as vast, formless intelligences for billions of years before the first intelligent species evolved. When the Necrontyr gave them bodies of living metal called necrodermis, the C’tan gained the ability to interact with the material world directly — and immediately set about consuming it. They are responsible for the biotransference that turned the Necrontyr into the soulless Necrons, and they fought the cataclysmic War in Heaven that reshaped the galaxy. Today, they exist only as shards — fragments of their former selves, imprisoned and weaponised by the very Necrons they once enslaved.

The C’tan are one of the most important elements of Warhammer 40,000’s deep lore. They connect the Necrons’ origins to the galaxy’s prehistory, provide an explanation for why the Warp is so dangerous, and raise fundamental questions about the nature of gods, power, and the relationship between creator and creation. Understanding the C’tan is essential for understanding the Necrons, the War in Heaven, and the shape of the galaxy itself.

What Were the C’tan Before They Got Bodies?

Before the Necrontyr gave them physical form, the C’tan were vast, diffuse entities of pure energy that existed in the spaces between stars. They fed on stellar radiation — the light, heat, and electromagnetic emissions of stars — drifting from star to star across millions of years. They had intelligence of a sort, but it was alien and slow, operating on timescales that made even the longest-lived mortal civilisations seem ephemeral.

The C’tan had no awareness of the Warp. As purely material beings — creatures of energy and physics rather than emotion and psychic power — they existed entirely in the material universe. The Immaterium was invisible and irrelevant to them. This fundamental disconnection from the Warp would later become one of their defining characteristics and one of their greatest advantages in the War in Heaven.

It is unknown how many C’tan originally existed. The lore suggests dozens or possibly hundreds, though only a handful are identified by name. Most were destroyed or consumed by their fellows over the aeons, as the C’tan — despite their godlike power — were not above preying on each other when other energy sources were scarce.

How Did the Necrontyr Give the C’tan Bodies?

The Necrontyr were a mortal species cursed with extremely short lifespans, their bodies ravaged by the intense radiation of their home star. Bitter, envious, and desperate to overcome their mortality, the Necrontyr went to war against the Old Ones — an ancient species who possessed the secret of immortality but refused to share it. The Necrontyr lost this first war badly, and in their desperation, they turned to the C’tan.

The Necrontyr’s scientists and metalworkers had discovered the C’tan drifting near their stars and devised a way to communicate with them. More importantly, they developed necrodermis — a form of living metal that could serve as a physical body for the C’tan’s energy. When a C’tan was given a necrodermis body, the results were transformative. The formerly diffuse, slow-thinking entity was suddenly concentrated into a single point, its intelligence sharpening dramatically, its power focused and controllable. For the first time, the C’tan could interact with the material world directly — touch it, shape it, destroy it.

The first C’tan to receive a body was Aza’gorod, the Nightbringer. When the Nightbringer tasted mortal life force for the first time (by consuming the Necrontyr who had given it its body), it discovered a new form of sustenance far more satisfying than stellar radiation — the life energy of living beings. This discovery would drive everything that followed. The C’tan were no longer content to feed on stars. They wanted souls.

What Is Biotransference?

Biotransference is the process by which the C’tan transformed the Necrontyr from mortal flesh-and-blood beings into the immortal metal Necrons. It is one of the most significant events in the entire Warhammer 40,000 timeline, and one of the most tragic.

The C’tan offered the Necrontyr exactly what they wanted: immortality. No more short lifespans, no more disease, no more weakness of the flesh. The Necrontyr would be transferred into bodies of living metal — necrodermis, the same substance that housed the C’tan themselves. They would be immune to age, disease, and most forms of damage. They would live forever.

What the C’tan did not tell the Necrontyr was the cost. Biotransference did not simply transfer the Necrontyr’s consciousness into metal bodies. It stripped away their souls — their emotions, their creativity, their individuality, their connection to the Warp. The beings that emerged from the biotransference furnaces were not Necrontyr in metal bodies. They were something less — something diminished. The rank-and-file Necrontyr became mindless automatons, their personalities erased entirely. Even the nobility and leaders retained only fragments of their former selves, their emotions dulled and their minds constrained.

The C’tan consumed the souls that were stripped away during biotransference, feasting on the life force of an entire species. Billions of Necrontyr went into the furnaces; billions of soulless Necrons emerged. It was, in the most literal sense, a species selling its soul — and the buyers were hungry gods who had no intention of giving anything back.

Who Are the Named C’tan?

Several C’tan are identified by name in the lore, each with a distinct identity and role in the galaxy’s history.

The Nightbringer (Aza’gorod) is the C’tan most associated with death. It was the first to receive a necrodermis body and the first to discover the taste of mortal life force. The Nightbringer’s influence is so ancient and so pervasive that it is believed to have implanted the fear of death into the collective unconscious of every species in the galaxy — the reason why virtually all mortal beings fear death is because the Nightbringer fed on that fear billions of years ago, burning the terror of mortality into the psychic fabric of all sentient life.

The Deceiver (Mephet’ran) is the C’tan of trickery and manipulation. It was the Deceiver who originally convinced the Necrontyr to give the C’tan bodies, and the Deceiver who persuaded them that biotransference was a fair trade. The Deceiver is the most cunning of the C’tan, preferring manipulation and deception to direct violence. It has been involved in countless schemes throughout galactic history, and some lore suggests that it played a role in creating the Pariah gene in humanity — the genetic trait that produces Blanks.

The Void Dragon (Mag’ladroth) is the C’tan most associated with technology and the material world. It is the most powerful of the C’tan in terms of raw physical might, and its mastery of the material universe is unmatched. The Void Dragon is of particular interest because of its possible connection to the Adeptus Mechanicus — some lore suggests that the Dragon of Mars, the entity imprisoned beneath the surface of Mars that the Mechanicus unknowingly worships as the Machine God (or the Omnissiah), may be a shard of the Void Dragon. If true, this would mean that the entire religion of the Adeptus Mechanicus — the Imperium’s technological backbone — is built on the worship of a trapped C’tan shard.

The Outsider (Tsara’noga) is the most enigmatic C’tan. Driven mad by consuming other C’tan during the War in Heaven (absorbing their personalities and memories along with their energy), the Outsider fled the galaxy entirely and now exists in a vast Dyson Sphere somewhere in the intergalactic void. It is said to be insane, tormented by the voices of the C’tan it consumed, and its return to the galaxy is one of the lore’s most ominous potential plot threads.

What Happened During the War in Heaven?

The War in Heaven was the cataclysmic conflict between the C’tan-led Necrons and the Old Ones, fought billions of years before the current timeline. It was the most destructive war in galactic history, reshaping the galaxy’s physical and psychic landscape in ways that persist to the present day.

Armed with their new Necron armies — billions of immortal metal warriors who felt no pain, no fear, and no mercy — the C’tan swept across the galaxy, destroying the Old Ones’ civilisation world by world. The Old Ones fought back with psychic weapons and genetically engineered warrior races (including the ancestors of the Aeldari and possibly the Orks), but the C’tan’s immunity to psychic power and the Necrons’ relentless, self-repairing armies proved overwhelming.

The war’s devastation was so severe that it permanently damaged the barrier between the material universe and the Warp. The Old Ones’ psychic weapons and the intense emotions generated by the conflict tore holes in reality, allowing Warp energy to flood into the material universe. This influx of psychic energy birthed the first daemons and created the conditions that would eventually produce the Chaos Gods. In a very real sense, the War in Heaven created the Warp as the dangerous, daemon-infested hellscape it is in the current era — before the war, the Warp was a calmer, less hostile dimension.

The Old Ones were ultimately destroyed (or fled the galaxy), but their legacy persisted in the species they had created. The Aeldari, the Krork, and other races continued to fight the Necrons after the Old Ones’ fall, eventually forcing a stalemate that led to the Great Sleep — the Necrons’ decision to enter hibernation for millions of years while the galaxy’s young species exhausted themselves.

How Were the C’tan Shattered?

The shattering of the C’tan is one of the most dramatic reversals in Warhammer 40,000 lore. After the War in Heaven ended and the Necrons entered the Great Sleep, the Silent King — Szarekh, the supreme ruler of the Necrons — turned against the C’tan.

Szarekh had come to understand the full extent of what biotransference had cost his people. The Necrontyr had not been given immortality — they had been robbed of their souls. The C’tan had not liberated them — they had enslaved them, feeding on their essence and using them as weapons in a war that served only C’tan interests. The Silent King’s rage at this betrayal was absolute, and he channelled it into a plan to destroy the gods his people had foolishly empowered.

Using weapons and technologies developed during the War in Heaven, the Necrons turned on the C’tan and shattered them. They could not destroy the C’tan entirely — the Star Gods were too powerful for true annihilation — but they could break them into fragments. Each C’tan was shattered into hundreds or thousands of shards, each shard retaining a fraction of the original entity’s power and personality.

These shards were then imprisoned in tesseract labyrinths — extradimensional prisons that contain and control the shards’ power. The Necrons kept these imprisoned shards as weapons, deploying them in battle when their power was needed. A C’tan shard is still an enormously powerful entity — capable of manipulating matter, energy, and time — but it is a shadow of the original C’tan’s full power, and it is bound to the will of its Necron captors.

C’tan Shards on the Tabletop

On the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop, C’tan shards appear as powerful units in the Necron army. They are tough, destructive, and possess unique abilities that reflect the original C’tan’s nature. The two most commonly fielded shards are the Nightbringer shard and the Deceiver shard, each with distinctive rules and models.

The Nightbringer shard is a close-combat monster, capable of dealing enormous damage to any target it engages. Its abilities reflect the Nightbringer’s association with death — it is designed to kill, and it does so with terrifying efficiency. On the tabletop, a Nightbringer shard can cut through even the toughest units with relative ease.

The Deceiver shard is more subtle, with abilities focused on misdirection and repositioning. It can redeploy units, create illusions, and generally make life difficult for the opposing player through trickery rather than raw combat power.

Transcendent C’tan represent unnamed or unidentified shards — fragments of C’tan whose original identity has been lost or is simply not specified. They offer a customisable option for players, with random abilities that reflect the unpredictable nature of C’tan power.

The Void Dragon shard was given a model and rules more recently, completing the trio of major named C’tan on the tabletop. Its abilities focus on technological manipulation, reflecting the Void Dragon’s mastery of the material world.

What Role Do the C’tan Play in the Current Setting?

In the current era of Warhammer 40,000, the C’tan exist primarily as weapons in the Necron arsenal. The shattered C’tan shards are deployed in battle when the Necrons need overwhelming power, released from their tesseract prisons to wreak havoc before being re-imprisoned. The shards are dangerous even to their captors — they are constantly seeking to escape their prisons and reconstitute themselves — but the Necrons’ containment technology has proven reliable enough to make the risk worthwhile.

The possibility of C’tan shards being reassembled into complete C’tan is one of the setting’s most ominous looming threats. If enough shards of a single C’tan were gathered and reunited, the result would be the return of a Star God in full — an entity of such power that it could reshape the galaxy. Some Necron Overlords are actively working to prevent this (seeing the C’tan as enemies to be kept permanently shattered), while others are attempting to achieve it (believing they can control a reassembled C’tan). The tension between these factions adds an internal political dimension to the Necrons’ already complex civilisation.

The Void Dragon shard beneath Mars remains one of the setting’s most tantalising plot threads. If confirmed as a C’tan shard, its presence beneath the Imperium’s most important forge world — and its possible connection to the Machine God worshipped by the Adeptus Mechanicus — could shatter the foundations of Imperial civilisation. The revelation that the Mechanicus’s god is a trapped alien parasite would be catastrophic for the Imperium’s technological infrastructure and religious unity.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the C’tan gods?

The C’tan are god-like in power but fundamentally different from the Chaos Gods. They are material beings — creatures of energy and physics — while the Chaos Gods are Warp entities composed of psychic energy. The C’tan have no connection to the Warp and cannot be affected by psychic powers. Whether they qualify as “gods” depends on how you define the term, but in terms of raw power, they are among the most powerful entities in the setting.

Could the C’tan defeat the Chaos Gods?

At full power, the C’tan and the Chaos Gods operate in entirely different domains — the C’tan in the material universe, the Chaos Gods in the Warp. A direct confrontation is difficult to envision. However, the C’tan’s immunity to psychic power and the Warp gives them a significant advantage against Chaos forces in the material world. During the War in Heaven, the C’tan were devastating against the psychic Old Ones precisely because of this immunity.

Is the Void Dragon really the Machine God?

This is one of the setting’s great unanswered questions. The lore strongly implies a connection between the Void Dragon and the Dragon of Mars, and between the Dragon of Mars and the Machine God, but GW has never made a definitive statement. The ambiguity is likely deliberate — confirming the connection would have massive implications for the setting.

Can a C’tan shard be permanently destroyed?

The lore suggests that C’tan shards can be further fragmented or temporarily dispersed, but true destruction may be beyond the capability of any known force. The C’tan are fundamental entities of the material universe, and destroying them entirely might require destroying the physical laws that sustain them — which would also destroy everything else.

Why did the Silent King shatter the C’tan instead of destroying them?

The Necrons could not fully destroy the C’tan — the Star Gods’ power exceeded even the Necrons’ considerable ability to annihilate. Shattering was the most effective option available: it broke the C’tan into manageable fragments that could be contained and controlled, neutralising them as independent threats while preserving their power for the Necrons’ own use.

What Are the C’tan? — The Star Gods Explained