"My lord, allow me to present this delicacy to you—pan-seared Sgog with fungal aroma."
After receiving permission, the Necrontyr lord climbed the steps and served Zahndrekh as his poison taster.
He lifted a plate holding a limbless ball of flesh fried with slimy fungi. It looked somewhat nauseating.
In truth, it was an Ork delicacy, a limbless meatball called Sgog.
Its flesh was springy, and aside from its foul stench, it had no real flaws.
These Necrontyr treated it as a delicacy of their own race.
After all, sixty million years ago, the Necrontyr had lost their bodies and souls, becoming Living Metal life-forms that could go without food, drink, sleep, or rest.
Even the most basic acts of life had become unnecessary things.
The culture and customs of their entire race had been utterly forgotten through the War in Heaven, which had lasted over a hundred thousand years, and the long sleep that followed.
Many fields were complete blanks, even when it came to food.
Even though the Crypteks worked hard to excavate the past, what they ultimately found was mostly incomplete data.
As for whether the dishes at the banquet had truly belonged to the Necrontyr of old, no one cared anymore.
They were merely accompanying the Crown-bearer in playing the part of the Necrontyr of those days, recreating as best they could the banquet scenes from fragmented memories.
The truth was, even the craftsmanship of Gretchin was much better than that of low-ranking Necrontyr.
At least they knew how to make a dish, instead of randomly piling every substance together, stirring it, and then burning it black.
A life without a soul had great difficulty understanding such things.
Squeak!
When the forks of the Necrontyr Overlords and lords stabbed into the dish, the limbless, meatball-like Sgog on