No one else knew what the Biotransference Device was, but Hogg knew it all too well. After all, he was a C'tan himself. Though it was called a Biotransference Device, to him it was a Necrontyr cupcake-making machine for C'tan.
A distant 65 million years ago, the Old Ones and the C'tan made contact after fighting a brutal war against the Dog-man Empire. That might have been fine, but the chaos left behind by the Dog-man Empire's collapse stirred the Warp—and also let a C'tan called The Deceiver taste the wonderful flavor of life energy.
Life energy sounded impressive, but in plain terms, it was the soul, brimming with vitality, of a living creature. It was also one way the physical world encroached upon the Warp.
As pure-energy beings born from the first Big Bang, the C'tan could be thought of as personifications of physical laws. But they didn't entirely embody the foundations of the physical universe. In other words, killing them wouldn't harm the physical universe in the slightest. They were merely spokesmen chosen to represent it.
By comparison, if someone had the ability to kill The Four Ruinous Powers, the Warp would still be the Warp. As long as the souls of living beings remained, the Warp could give birth to new Chaos Gods. In fact, the Warp held a higher standing than the physical world. The two were twin sisters.
At first, everything had been fine. The C'tan basked on stars and fed, and though Hogg's senses told him that stellar energy could only sate hunger and had no taste at all, it was plentiful and easy to find—basically a staple food.
But you couldn't live on plain steamed buns every day. You needed vegetables. And what counted as vegetables to the C'tan? Souls.
It sounded completely