Necare is a minor antagonist in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. He is the greatest of the Overlords of Barbarus, the Abhuman mutants that ruled the planet, and briefly took on the Primarch Mortarion as an adopted son. Physically, Necare was a lanky, pale-skinned, corpse-like humanoid who towered over the huts of the Barbarus populace, and while physically very weak, Necare possessed immense sorcerous powers.
Necare was featured in the works Lantern's Light, The Horus Heresy Book One- Betrayal, and The Lords of Silence.
Biography[]
In the grim darkness of the far future, humanity's great stellar empire was shattered by the cataclysmic Age of Strife. Many human settlements were destroyed, or degraded in isolation. One settlement, on the bleak, toxin-laden planet Barbarus, was ruled over by the seemingly alien Overlords, who were most likely humans that sold themselves to the dark powers of Chaos. By the late 30th millennium, High Overlord Necare was the greatest of the Overlords, ruling over the human populace with an iron fist, able to survive in the toxin-laden high mountains while the humans toiled away in the habitable zones below. Necare had fought his way into power through wars with other Overlords, possessing great magical abilities and armies of undead golems. Additionally, Necare would venture into the human settlements to collect new slaves for whatever purposes he desired, whether labor or another body to add to his army, keeping the people in perpetual fear of him.
One day, while Necare was collecting more human "crops" in the wake of massacring a defiant settlement, an incubation pod from distant Terra crash-landed on Barbarus after being thrown through the Warp. Within the pod was a young Primarch, a transhuman son of the Emperor of Mankind, who was very resilient to the toxins of the mountains he landed on. Necare heard the cries of the boy, and realized that no mere human could survive the toxins of the mountains, swiftly retrieved the Primarch, for despite his dark power, Necare always wanted an heir. He named the boy Mortarion, child of death, and took Mortarion higher up the mountains to see how much the Primarch could survive. Unnerved by the extreme resilience Mortarion showed at ever-increasing altitudes, Necare found a point where Mortarion would not be able to survive, and built a wall of black iron there, moving his mansion behind it as a contingency plan in case Mortarion ever turned on him.
With that, Necare trained Mortarion in every art of war he knew, and then sent Mortarion to the frontlines of conflicts with other Overlords, where Mortarion faced off against golems and even daemonic creatures. Throughout Mortarion's service, Necare always treated Mortarion as an enforcer, refusing to let him see the human settlements and keeping him held in a mountain dungeon when not in battle, only referring to the humans as fragile prey. Necare continued to incessantly test Mortarion by throwing him into more and more battles, berating Mortarion for any failure by claiming that his will to let Mortarion live was diminishing, although he would pull Mortarion out of danger in case of failure, leaving Mortarion to wallow in shame each time.
Eventually, Mortarion sought to break away from the increasingly abusive and manipulative Necare, wanting to know what the fragile "prey" at the base of the mountains were. Necare refused to let him go, but Necare's repeated denial just fueled Mortarion's obsession. Soon, Mortarion broke out of the dungeon and escaped down the mountain, leaving Necare to yell after him that for this act of betrayal, Mortarion would be put to death if he ever returned.
At the base of the mountain, Mortarion met humans for the first time, and led them in a rebellion against the Overlords, amassing an army and developing anti-toxin gear, taking the fight to the Overlords for the first time. The Overlords were systemically slaughtered over the course of decades, but Necare remained just out of reach, for his mansion was so high up the mountains that even the respirator gear would simply disintegrate from the sheer concentration of toxins. Regardless, Mortarion still plotted to face and kill his adopted father, only for none other than Mortarion's real father to arrive- the Emperor of Mankind Himself arrived on Barbarus, part of a Great Crusade across the stars to rebuild humanity's lost golden age. The Emperor, in the guise of a mysterious stranger, told Mortarion that if he could slay Necare alone, Barbarus would be left alone. However, if Mortarion failed, he was to pledge total fealty to the stranger. Enraged, Mortarion climbed up the mountain alone, his sheer determination pushing him through the toxins towards Necare's stronghold.
Necare awaited Mortarion inside the mansion, and when Mortarion finally arrived, the Primarch's respirator had corroded away, and the toxins were more than physiology could take, starting to kill him. As Mortarion fell to his knees at the gates, unable to fight, Necare smugly approached the weakened Primarch, intent on fulfilling his promise to kill Mortarion. However, before he could unleash his powers on Mortarion, the Emperor entered and stepped between His son and the Overlord, unaffected by the toxins. Drawing a flaming sword, the Emperor killed Necare in a single stroke, before revealing His true identity to Mortarion. With Necare's death, Mortarion was forced to pledge himself to the Emperor as he recovered, joining the Imperium of Man as the Primarch of the Dusk Raiders Space Marine Legion, which Mortarion bolstered with the men who had served in his war against the Overlords, turning the Legion into the Death Guard.
Over a century later, Mortarion would join Horus Lupercal and other Primarchs in the Horus Heresy, a great betrayal against the Emperor in the name of the Chaos Gods. During the Horus Heresy, Mortarion was converted to a Daemon Prince of Nurgle, and sometime after his conversion, Mortarion located Necare's soul in the Warp. Capturing the soul, Mortarion locked Necare in a clock-like device that continually tortured Necare with various Warp-based poisons and diseases, mounting the clock aboard his flagship Endurance. Occasionally, Mortarion would talk to his tormented adopted father, telling Necare how he would wait until the Imperium was destroyed to give Necare some proper attention. As such, Necare remains trapped in the device into the 41st millennium, where there is only war.
