Orikan

Orikan the Diviner was born among the Necrontyr more than sixty million years ago. His family expected him to become a warrior but his frail body prevented him from entering the Immortals. Orikan instead devoted himself to mysticism and the study of the heavens. He became an exceptional astromancer capable of calculating future events from the movement of stars and celestial bodies. When the C’tan offered the Necrontyr salvation from their short lives through biotransference Orikan warned that accepting their bargain would bring disaster. His counsel was rejected by the Silent King. Orikan refused to enter the biofurnaces willingly and was ultimately dragged into them in chains. He emerged as a Necron Cryptek while retaining both his intellect and his resentment over what had been done to his people.

Orikan awakened on Mandragora long before much of the Sautekh Dynasty and spent millennia pursuing his own calculations. His ability to predict the future earned him enormous influence despite his abrasive manner. When events contradict one of his predictions he can resort to chronomancy and move backward through time until circumstances produce the outcome he originally foresaw. Orikan has used this ability not merely to avert catastrophe but to protect his reputation as an infallible seer. His ultimate ambition extends beyond prophecy. He believes the Necrons should abandon physical bodies entirely and ascend into beings of pure energy rather than attempt to reclaim mortal flesh. He has spent ages preparing for a celestial alignment that he believes will allow him to accomplish this transformation permanently.

His longest conflict has been with Trazyn the Infinite. Their struggle over the Astrarium Mysterios and the supposed tomb of the ancient Necrontyr Nephreth continued for thousands of years on Serenade. Their thefts and sabotage eventually revealed that both had been manipulated by a powerful shard of Mephet’ran the Deceiver. Faced with a common enemy they cooperated long enough for Orikan to assume a radiant energy form and overpower the C’tan shard. Their alliance ended almost immediately afterward and Orikan later attempted to steal the imprisoned shard from Solemnace. More recently the Silent King sought Orikan’s assistance during the war in the Pariah Nexus. Orikan initially refused but changed his decision after the arrival of Vashtorr’s forces. His sudden willingness to serve has left even Szarekh concerned about what the Diviner has foreseen.

Appearance: Orikan the Diviner is entirely metallic with a tall slender skeletal build formed from silver metal and dark mechanical components. His head has a narrow skull-like face enclosed by black and silver plating with glowing green lenses. A large golden segmented halo frames the head with broad fan-shaped plates. Several bright green energy spheres rise above the crown on short mechanical supports.

His torso is built from exposed silver mechanisms beneath teal and gold armor. Broad teal shoulder plates extend outward and carry circular green energy nodes. Gold plates frame the upper chest and neck while additional green cores are embedded along the centerline. Long segmented arms end in narrow metal hands with articulated fingers.

His lower body narrows into a long metallic structure covered by teal plates and gold segmented panels. A large articulated metal tail extends behind him in many silver sections and curves into a pointed end.

Personality: Orikan is proud and intensely secretive. He regards his mastery of time and prediction as proof that few minds can rival his own. Challenges to his forecasts can become personal insults and he has altered past events simply to ensure that his original prediction remains correct. He is patient enough to pursue plans across millennia but can become spiteful when another Necron frustrates his work. Orikan guards his most advanced chronomantic techniques carefully because knowledge of their full extent would weaken the advantage he holds over rivals. His obsession with transcendence shapes much of his existence. He sees his metal body as another prison and believes his species can attain something greater than either flesh or necrodermis.

Trazyn is Orikan’s greatest rival and one of the few beings whose persistence can match his own. Orikan despises Trazyn’s obsession with preserving the past while Trazyn finds Orikan’s fixation on the future equally intolerable. Their feud has involved lawsuits before Necron councils and theft and destruction across immense spans of time. Even so they understand each other well enough to cooperate when survival requires it. Orikan’s relationship with Szarekh is rooted in older resentment. He warned the Silent King against trusting the C’tan and was forced into biotransference after that warning was ignored. His later decision to work under Szarekh therefore reflects necessity rather than restored loyalty.

Orikan is one of the Necrons’ greatest astromancers and chronomancers. He can calculate possible futures through celestial movements with extraordinary accuracy and use that knowledge to anticipate enemy decisions before they occur. When prediction alone fails he can manipulate time directly and return to an earlier point before changing his actions. Repeated temporal resets place enormous strain upon reality and can weaken the barrier surrounding the Warp enough for daemonic manifestations to occur years later. Under suitable celestial conditions Orikan can absorb vast amounts of energy and transform into a radiant being of immense power. In this state he became strong enough to defeat an unusually powerful shard of the Deceiver.

Orikan carries the Staff of Tomorrow. This unique Staff of Light can manipulate temporal forces while releasing destructive radiation and energy against his enemies. His foresight allows him to combine the weapon with knowledge of an opponent’s movements before those movements have been completed. Orikan also possesses the durability and self-repair capabilities of an ancient Necron body even though direct physical combat is secondary to his mastery of time. His personal vessel is the Scythe-class harvest ship Zodiac’s Fury which carries him between the worlds required by his calculations.