Flayed Ones

The Flayed Ones are a horror even by the standards of their own soulless race, victims of a curse laid upon the necrons in the final days of the War in Heaven. When the Silent King turned on the star gods, the c'tan called Llandu'gor the Flayer was not merely shattered like its kin but utterly annihilated, and with its dying malice it wove one last curse: the Flayer virus, an echo of its own ravening hunger, seeded into the necrons who had destroyed it.

A necron in whom the curse takes root suffers a slow, agonising unravelling of the mind. It becomes consumed by an overwhelming compulsion to devour flesh, driven to gorge itself even though its metal body can digest nothing at all. Unable ever to sate the hunger, the afflicted warrior descends into gibbering madness, cladding itself in the flayed skins and severed parts of those it has slain and stalking the battlefield as a shambling nightmare of hooked claws and hanging gore.

Worst of all, the affliction spreads. By the time its true nature was understood, the wandering afflicted had carried it to a thousand worlds and infected dozens of proud dynasties. Other necrons regard the Flayed Ones with loathing and dread, for the curse is a contagion that respects no rank or lineage, and any warrior suspected of harbouring it is cast out or destroyed before the madness can take hold and multiply.