Nemesor Zahndrekh

Nemesor Zahndrekh is counted among the finest military minds the necrontyr ever produced, a general whose brilliance shone even in the wars of the ancient empire and who remains one of the mightiest heroes of the Sautekh Dynasty. His command of strategy borders on the supernatural, and few adversaries, necron or otherwise, can hope to outmanoeuvre him upon the field of battle. Yet Zahndrekh is also mad, his mind so damaged by the aeons of the great sleep that he no longer perceives the galaxy as it truly is.

The nemesor labours under a profound and unshakeable delusion. He believes himself still a living, breathing necrontyr, waging the long-finished Wars of Secession against rebellious warlords who defy the Triarch and its Silent King. He does not see orks, aeldari or humans arrayed against him; he sees only treacherous fellow necrontyr to be chastised and brought back into the fold. So complete is the delusion that he denies the very metal of his own body, insisting against all evidence that he remains a creature of flesh and blood.

This madness lends his campaigns a strange, chivalrous flavour utterly at odds with necron custom. Zahndrekh takes prisoners where other lords would exterminate, treating captured enemy officers as honoured guests to be housed, feted and gently persuaded to abandon their rebellion and return their loyalty to the Triarch. He wages war as a courtly game of honour, and is genuinely baffled when his opponents fail to observe the ancient courtesies he takes for granted.

And yet, for all his delusion, Zahndrekh wins. Time and again his tactical genius carries the day for the Sautekh, his crippled understanding of reality never once dulling the edge of his generalship. Watching over him through every battle is his ever-loyal bodyguard, the Vargard Obyron, who long ago abandoned any hope of restoring his master to sanity and instead simply ensures that the deluded genius survives to conquer another day.