Literature / The Twice-Dead King

The Twice-Dead King is a Warhammer 40,000 novel by author Nate Crowley.

Divided into two parts (Ruin and Reign) and published with a 3-month gap in October 2021 and January 2022, it follows Necron lord Oltyx, once heir to the throne of the Ithakas dynasty, now disgraced and exiled to the borders of their territory to fight off endless waves of orks. Upon discovering that a far worse enemy — an Imperial crusade — follows after them, however, Oltyx is forced to break his exile and wade back into dynastic politics in hopes of bringing warning to, and possibly saving, his now-crumbling dynasty.

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This work contains the following tropes:

• Absolute Xenophobe:
  • The Imperium of Man suffers not the alien to live, which is why they're going on crusade.
  • Exaggerated with Borakka and the Destroyer Cult: their end goal is not just the destruction of all non-necron species, but all life, everywhere.
• All of Them: In Reign, as the human crusade fleet begins catching up to the Akrops:
  Oltyx: How many ships?
  Yenekh: All of them, my king.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Mentep, having wiped his own memories of the atrocities he committed as a psychomancer, is much kindlier. Oltyx also realizes he was mistaken about the reason for his exile.
  Mentep: You know all too well, do you not, how it feels to discover atrocities in your past you had erased all memory of.
• And I Must Scream:
  • This series introduces the "dysphorakh", which is described as a constantly-screaming subconscious phenomenon caused by parts of the organic Necrontyr mind that got preserved in the Necrons, perpetually convinced it's about to die because it's trapped in a body that can't breathe, has no heartbeat, etcetera. It's suggested that all Necrons suffer from it, and that the various fixations notable Necrons develop (such as Trazyn's collection and Imotekh's wars) are ultimately attempts to distract themselves from it. When Oltyx nearly succumbs to it, he's left in a constant state of panic, desperately trying to breathe even though he has no mouth or lungs.
  • This is also the fate of all the Necrons on Carnotite. Am-heht enslaved the entire population, and even Mentep, who admits to having committed terrible atrocities, is horrified and disgusted by it. Only one is shown, "Shabb", who used to be the Phaeron of a now-forgotten dynasty, and it's implied that he's been trapped in this state for millions of years while others got to be in stasis. Am-heht briefly releases control, and he certainly does scream, with so much agony and madness that Oltyx is terrified.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Oltyx has been unknowingly under the influence of the Flayer Curse for centuries without succumbing. It’s only until he hits the Despair Event Horizon that he finally gives in to the hunger. But it turns out, giving in to the Flayer Curse without fear or regret is something like Necron nirvana, and Oltyx ends up becoming/taking on the mantle of Valgul, the Flayer King, the only Flayed One to retain his grip on reality.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Given their status as Friendly Enemies, Zultanekh professes himself quite grieved at Djoseras's death.
• The Atoner: To make up for poorly-specified terrible crimes during the War in Heaven, Mentep devoted himself to researching and attempting to cure the Flayer Curse and working as the necron equivalent of a psychotherapist.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Necron dynastic protocols immediately transfer authority to the heir should the dynast die. Upon Oltyx's ascension, the world literally goes gold, and every necron present kneels.
• Berserk Button: Even with all his non-traditional opinions, Oltyx thinks that Unnas desecrating and wearing the mummified corpse of the semi-legendary dynastic founder Ithakka like a mask is beyond the pale.
• Big Brother Mentor: Djoseras, Oltyx's elder brother, taught him almost all he knows about tactics and Necrontyr social structure.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The necrontyr had domesticated creatures called uropygasts, which resemble 2- to 3-foot centipedes.
• Big Damn Heroes: After Oltyx has been captured and tortured by evil vizier Hemium, Djoseras strides in bringing all the troops he has mustered offscreen to defend Antikef. And when that defence begins to fail, Yenekh and the Akrops appear so that Oltyx can escape.
• Blood Knight: Yenekh
• Bodyguard Betrayal: Unnas' royal lychguard are fed up enough with serving a Flayer that they do nothing to prevent his assassination.
• Broken Ace: Yenekh. Amazing warrior and fleet commander, now fighting a losing battle against the Flayer Curse.
• Brought Down to Normal: When captured, Oltyx gets all the special abilities his social class afforded him stripped away, and has to fight like a normal necron.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Lysikor is a highly skilled assassin. He also has no empathy or social skills and a tendency to steal things from Oltyx and return them randomly.
• The Caligula: Dynast Unnas has succumbed to the Flayer Curse, throwing Ithakas into disarray.
• Catapult Nightmare: Oltyx comes to screaming and trying to scramble away from an induced flashback to biotransferance. Justified in that, as a robot, he no longer has any of the physiological mechanisms that maintain atonia while unconscious.
• The Chains of Commanding: In Reign, Oltyx has finally taken up the crown of the Ithakas dynasty - which comprises a minuscule handful of necrons, a large proportion of whom are senile or going mad, running desperately away from a human armada. He struggles to maintain respect, keep control, and make tactical decisions.
• Chekhov's Gun: Denet's monoliths, which he finally manages to summon at the very end of the book to shield the Akrops from destruction above Drazak.
  • The Legend of Chekhov: The rumours of Valgul the Bone King and his Flayed kingdom on Drazak. Although Valgul himself never appears, Drazak exists, and Oltyx takes up mythical role as Flayed king.
• Child Soldiers: Oltyx first goes to war four years before reaching the Necron age of majority. This is implied to be unremarkable.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Hemium tortures Oltyx by turning off his motor functions and turning on his pain receptors, leaving him paralyzed as Hemium takes his time carving him up and stripping away many of his components.
• Combat Pragmatist: Oltyx's character is established in this way. Necron honour would hold that he is obligated to prevent the invading Orks from any contact from Sedh's tomb complexes, and to fight this battle with his foot soldiers in traditional melee outside the tomb. Oltyx decides that this is a load of bull, lets the Orks into the tomb, separates and traps them in the labyrinthine tunnels, and then sets Sedh's Flayed Ones on them.
• Condemned Contestant: Hemium talks Unnas into holding gladiatorial fights with his enemies, rather than simply executing them
• Continuity Nod:
  • Trazyn, Orikan, and Szarekh, other named Necron characters (and, for the first two, the protagonists of The Infinite and the Divine) are periodically name-dropped.
  • Zahndrekh and Obyron, protagonists of Crowley's previous novella Severed, appear in flashback, no less idiosyncratic in the flesh.
  • Mentep mentions a former colleague, the cryptek Khertykh, as having travelled to Doahht (the setting of Severed), heavily implying that he is responsible for the events of that story.
• Creative Sterility: Biotransferance removed large amounts of the Necrons' creative abilities.
• Cryptic Background Reference: A character named Parik is mentioned exactly once, but in a context that implies they - like Djoseras and Oltyx - may have been part of the Ithakan succession before falling in battle. The manner of their death, and their relation to the two princes, are never elaborated on again.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • The evocatory medium allows a necron to retrieve a memory in picture-perfect sensory detail, at the cost of permanently losing that memory after it has been relived. Needless to say, unjudicious use can do a lot of psychological damage.
  • In the final defense of Antikef, Djoseras shores up the city's Deflector Shields with energy from his personal, internal power source. It shorts all his other systems out for a while.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Mentep worked for a mad scientist during the War in Heaven, creating unspecified horrors before eventually rebelling with his colleagues and devoting himself to atonement.
• Do Androids Dream?: The necrons believe themselves soulless, though sentient; Crowley leaves it ambiguous as to whether the reader is meant to agree. The relative inhumanity of the book's humans additionally complicates the question.
• Dumb Struck: Upon realizing Djoseras has died, Oltyx is too grieved to say the appropriate litany.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  • Denet finally summoning the monoliths and saving the Akrops.
  • Djoseras's Last Stand against the Astartes invading Antikef.
• Dysfunction Junction: Sedh being a dumping ground for dynastic undesirables, all members of its population have some psychological issues going on.
  The Council of Sedh was [...] a walking, mostly talking catalogue of all the ways in which the post-necrontyr psyche could collapse.
• Eldritch Location: The series offers a few of them:
  • The planet Carnotite makes everyone uncomfortable. It's been completely taken over by Am-heht, a Necron warlock who has transformed into a towering, tentacled Mechanical Abomination. It's implied they were awake for the eons of the Great Sleep, running horrific experiments all the while, and not only has the planet been rendered a constantly-shifting irradiated wasteland, but the void of space around it has been stained red. Oh, and as Oltyx is leaving, he sees flashing patterns in the planet's structure that are disturbingly similar to the patterns of a Necron consciousness.
  • The "ghostwind" seems to be a sort of Void Between the Worlds; Mentep describes its discovery as digging down through the layers of space, reality, and meta-reality until they "found the bottom". It contains absolutely nothing; no light, no gravity, no kind of spatial or quantum structure than can be measured by their instruments, or so much as a speck of dust. It's so "fundamental" that their more advanced technology won't work, and they have to resort to simpler methods like radio communication. Oltyx perceives it as sentient and hungry — energy spilled into that void doesn't just dissipate but gets sucked away, as if consumed — and is reminded ominously of the C'tan.
• Epic Fail: Oltyx and Djoseras both got a single-shot tachyon arrow built into their bodies after biotransference, an immensely powerful weapon that can obliterate Imperial Titans. Oltyx wasted his almost immediately on a single Eldar craft, and missed. He does not like being reminded of that.
• Evil Chancellor: Hemium, Unnas's vizier, takes advantage of his mental decline to the Flayer Curse to take control of the dynasty.
• The Exile: Before the start of the novel, Oltyx has been exiled to Sedh for attempted regicide.
• Face Death with Dignity: Necrons intending this will turn off their recall protocols so their consciousness will die with their body. Neth does it when Oltyx plans to kill him for failure, and Djoseras does it before his last stand.
• Flashback: Large portions of Ruin show Oltyx's youth, courtesy of his evocatory medium technology.
• Flockof Wolves: When Oltyx returns to his flagship at the end of the novel, prepared to admit the truth that he is infected with the Flayed One curse he promptly discovers that at this point all his remaining subjects are likewise victims of the curse who were previously hiding their symptoms.
• Friendly Enemy: Djoseras and Zultanekh developed an immense respect for and friendship with each other over years of war between their dynasties, and kept in touch even after the peace treaty was signed. Zultanekh's regard is such that he lends Oltyx risky, lifesaving aid on nothing but Djoseras's request.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: Oltyx and the remains of his dynasty receive their happy ending when they realize the Flayer curse is nothing to be afraid of and surrender to it willingly, joining/retroactively founding the legendary Bone Kingdom of Drazak that all Flayed Ones are drawn to.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Transformation into an immortal robot, and the concomitant Creative Sterility, did no favours to Djoseras's musical ability.
• Honour Before Reason: Djoseras refuses to break loyalty with Unnas despite the latter's insanity, and refuses to flee and let the humans take over Antikef.
• Horror Hunger: The Flayer Curse gives Necrons the urge to eat the flesh from, and wear the skin and bones of, organic creatures.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: The Imperium of Man is the antagonists, as seen through Oltyx's Necron perspective. The Twice-Dead King books are two of a very small number of books where it’s the Imperium that serves as the faceless, alien threat, without even a POV character to humanize them (although a short story included in the physical copy of Ruin gives the Angels Encarmine’s perspective on the siege of Antikef). Despite technological inferiority, they are a serious threat through sheer numbers.
• I Never Got Any Letters: Subverted. Oltyx accuses Djoseras of ignoring his reports. Djoseras responds that a) he read every single report, he was just prevented from replying, and b) nothing ever prevented them from just talking normally via their Necron private messaging systems, other than Oltyx's refusal to.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Lysikor finds Oltyx's martial skill, when he uses it fully, to be very impressive.
• Invading Refugees: The orks that are invading Sedh are revealed to be running from an encroaching Imperial crusade.
• It Only Works Once: The tachyon arrow weapon both Oltyx and Djoseras have contains a single shot only. Oltyx wasted his early on during the War in Heaven, missing a single Eldar flyer. Djoseras kept his, and shows it off by instantly obliterating an Imperial Titan with it.
• Jerkass Gods: The C'tan really did the Necrontyr dirty with biotransferance. A significant example is the inclusion of pain receptors in their robot bodies, which the invokedWord of God outright called "a dick move by the C'tan".
• Killed Offscreen: Djoseras is killed by an Angels Encarnadine Astartes while Oltyx flees the battle of Antikef.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Oltyx's evocatory medium destroys the memories selected to be relived; Mentep's prototype does the same as its explicit purpose.
• Madness Mantra: The “cannibal hymn” sung by the Flayed Ones who have totally overrun Antikef, giving praise to the “eater of gods”, Akh-Weynis-Wenm-Netr, the now totally insane and Flayer-corrupted King Unnas. As a bonus, it’s based nearly verbatim on a real Egyptian funerary spell first recorded in the pyramid of the pharaoh Unas.
• Mark of Shame: As a sign of his disgrace, Oltyx's shiny silver coating is stripped off when he is exiled, leaving him matte and black.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Is the Flayer Curse the dying vengeance of the evil god Llandu'gor on the race that murdered it? Is it a psychological condition arising from lingering biological instincts moved to a mechanical body? A mix of both? Nobody seems sure.
  • Also, when Oltyx discovers he has the Curse and pilots his personal ship towards the Imperial fleet on a suicide mission. His core ruptures and he ‘dies.’ While in this state of ‘death,’ he experiences visions akin to those produced by the evocatory medium, but the memories don’t belong to him. This is never fully explained.
• Mirroring Factions: We have the warriors of Ithakas - ex-biological constructs afflicted by the Flayer Curse (which makes them crave flesh to eat, caused by the ancient murder of their god Llandu'gor) - facing off against the Angels Encarnadine - transhuman constructs afflicted by the Red Thirst (which makes them crave blood to drink) and the Black Rage (caused by the ancient murder of their primarch).
• Mook Horror Show: The crew of the Polyphemus against the Flayed.
  [The Flayed] travelled through the vents and ducts and abandoned places of the ship, skittering silently above and below whatever barricades the crew could erect. The defenders only ever glimpsed them as dark flashes at the edge of vision, or at fatally close range, as they pounced from the shadows behind the humans' gun nests.
  It was not a battle. It was butchery [...] they did not know where their enemy was coming from. They could only react - and every time they were sent to reinforce a strongpoint, they would arrive only to an empty corridor, sluiced with blood, shell casings and flecks of bone.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Most necrons are programmed to have complete loyalty to their king and dynasty; Djoseras's loyalty is chosen, but still absolute.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Necrons accidentally take a golden Imperial artifact, and decide to mock the humans by melting it down and using it to decorate their ships. The artifact contained the sacred remains of an Imperial Saint, and those remains hold a very potent psychic charge, making it basically a beacon for the humans to continue following and attacking the fleeing Ithakas fleet.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Council of Sedh, composed as it is of senile, disgraced, and/or resentful minor nobles, is utterly incapable of deciding on any useful course of action.
• Pardon My Klingon: An interesting variant. "Khertt" (which means “feces”) is considered unimaginably rude in Necron, even though it's two euphemisms removed from both its actual meaning and being an actual curse, and Xenology uses it in a perfectly innocent context.
• Patricide: Oltyx attempts to kill Unnas thrice before finally succeeding.
• Position of Literal Power: The higher-class a Necron is, the better quality of robotic body they get, and the more technological benefits they have access to, which translates to greater martial prowess. When Oltyx becomes dynast and gets the accompanying upgrade, he gains a whole host of new abilities which take time for him to figure out.
• Red Is Violent: In the time of flesh, Ithakas' Red Marshals were executioners sent to ritually sacrifice commoners to appease the sun, and later to beat and drag the unwilling to biotransference. After biotransference, the Red Marshals fell uniformly to the Destroyer madness, which these books portray as a state of constant Unstoppable Rage that requires Destroyers to be forced into stasis when there's nothing around to attack. Even their core-flux glows red instead of the standard Necron Sickly Green Glow.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Oltyx is emotional, non-traditional, defiant, and pragmatic; Djoseras is The Dutiful Son and principled to a fault.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The three flagships of the Imperial crusade fleet have names drawn from the Odyssey, and play similar roles:
  • The Polyphemus is named after the cyclops who Odysseus outwits and blinds, only for this to cause even more trouble for him. At the end of Ruin, Oltyx and Yenekh trick the Polyphemus, slicing off its massive figurehead as they flee. In Reign, they keep the figurehead as a trophy, only to discover that the entire Imperial fleet is now hunting them relentlessly by tracking the psychically-charged gold the figurehead was made of.
  • The Lystraegonian, a Space Marine battle barge, is named after a race of cannibalistic giants who sink all but one of Odysseus’s ships. It’s the Lystraegonian and the Angels Encarmine (a Blood Angels successor, and so subject to the Red Thirst) aboard who ultimately bring down Antikef, forcing Olytx to flee aboard a single warship.
  • The Tyresias, an Ark Mechanicus, is named after a blind prophet whose ghost Odysseus encounters and shows him how to return home. Oltyx boards and destroys the Tyresias at the gravitic trebuchet he uses to reach Carnotite, where he learns of the ghostwind that ultimately takes him to Drazak, his new home.
  • Also, one should consider the similarities between the names “Odysseus” and “Oltyx”, especially considering his home dynasty is called Ithakas.
• Reluctant Psycho: Yenekh fights the Flayer Curse to the best of his abilities.
• Reluctant Ruler: Djoseras is next-in-line to the throne, and is batshit terrified of the prospect of ever actually taking it.
• Rock Beats Laser: In one scene from Reign, an Imperial nova cannon obliterates a Necron ship in one shot, because its defenses are designed for threats so sophisticated that something as brutish and simplistic as a hunk of metal traveling at very high speed barely registers to them. The Necron ship’s shield generators implode, taking the ship with it.
• Scenery-Based Societal Barometer: The physical damage to the Ithakas dynasty's homeworld Antikef, and the re-establishment of an ecosystem, reflects its inhabitants' fall to the Flayer Curse.
• Schizo Tech: In Ruin, Oltyx experiences a memory of pre-biotransference Antikef, watching the sun rise over the capital city, and notes that even after becoming a spacefaring empire with unfathomable technology at its disposal, Necrontyr commoners are still forced to make their homes out of mud brick.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Oltyx goes on his suicide mission against the Polyphemus plated in bone and wearing a skull he stole from an Astartes chaplain's armour, ostensibly for psychological warfare purposes.
• Sociopathic Hero: Lysikor is a Deathmark assassin, an honorary nemessor, and trusty instrument for Oltyx, both in battle and in court matters. He's also kept on a short leash since Oltyx can't trust him, and Lysikor is power-grubbing kleptomaniac, who earned his title by murdering everybody on-world who outranked him, and he's building his personal army by stealing Canoptek robots of all sorts (since he isn't allowed to command necrons of his own). When he parts ways with Oltyx, it's with a message wishing Oltyx luck, mentioning that he stole all the canopteks, and informing Oltyx that the latter's actions put him out of reach for Lysikor to betray and kill him, as was expected. Lysikor was genuinely regretful about it, as though he was sorry to disappoint Oltyx by not playing the role that was expected of him.
• Space Battle: The conclusion of Ruin, and most of Reign are marked by numerous fights between the crusade forces and the fleeing necrons.
• Staking the Loved One: Discussed. When Oltyx finds out Yenekh is a Flayed One, he proceeds to tell him exactly how he should cast him out or execute him, while Yenekh begs for another chance.
• Stern Chase: Reign; Crowley wanted to write "a story that's one long chase scene".
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: The Ogdobekh dynasty is noted to use a bizarre sentence structure where everything is phrased as a question and answer, rather than a straightforward statement. Almost all of Zultanekh's dialogue is delivered this way.
  Zultanekh: Is Unnas lucky to have you, then? Yes, he is. And will you make a fine dynast one day? Yes, you will.
• Talking to Themself: Oltyx has five "sub-minds", copies of certain aspects of his own psyche, connected to his own. He consults with them frequently in mental dialogue.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: a significant subset of the Necrontyr population were dragged involuntarily to biotransference. Olytx himself was one such, having lost his nerve moments before stepping through the gate.
• The Virus: The Flayer Curse fills this role for the Necrons, causing them to grow talons and crave flesh they can no longer eat.
  • Virus-Victim Symptoms: Flayed Ones start with social withdrawal and mood lability, then gain the urge to bite people's faces off and begin to physically morph, taking on clawed and twisted forms.
• Warrior Prince: Oltyx and Djoseras.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Oltyx spends much of his time in Reign smoothing over or crushing political dissent among his followers - while they are still fleeing the crusade.
• We Have Reserves:
  • Necrontyr culture valued the lives of the lower class very little, and so took this approach to war. This was only intensified as biotransferance granted them the ability to automatically recall and repair damaged warriors, meaning each one could be sacrificed multiple times. However, sixty million years without upkeep means that the translation tech has accumulated errors, so they can expect upwards of three percent failure rate. Considering that they have no ability to replace warriors that have been completely destroyed, this is a very serious problem.
  • The Imperium, despite lacking this ability, wins by accounting their soldiers' lives even cheaper - and having a lot more of them.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The necrons have invincible bodies, but not invincible minds, and are all slowly going mad from the weight of immortality. Oltyx considers biotransferance the worst mistake of his life.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Lysikor obtained his nemesor-hood by the simple expedient of killing everybody higher in rank than him.

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