I got an old Necron Monolith that I want to touch up and paint. Therefore I was looking for decals and informations about the Necron runes. However, there was hardly any information about this in the codexes. The codices did not have an alternate alphabet for the runes as in older versions of other armies (as for the Orc or Chaos runes).
So i first concentrated on the existing decals, of which there aren't a ton of different bows like the Space Marines. The most recent sheet I could find was from 2011. This is also the most extensive one and also includes all runes from older sheets.
The decals on the sheet can be roughly divided into 3 types:
- On the left are runes made up of circle parts and straight lines
- At the top right are the runes of the dynasties
- Below right are simplified electrical circuits
Only the first ones are interesting for the language. The circuits (3) are only suggested lines for decoration and the dynasty runes (2) are layered symbols for the individual units, which are already described in more detail in the 8th edition Necron codex.
The circle and line runes (1) look like they contain repeating parts. When they were created, only the futuristic look was probably taken into account. but it would be nice to have an alphabet for these runes to create your own which also have a meaning.
I searched a bit further and found the Cryptic Language - Crypt by Mageek. here
He started making a substitute alphabet. The characters are not exactly the same as in the decals, but the look fits very well. Since I also like the look very much, I took the characters as a basis to create vector graphics.
If you take the central axis, which is typical for Necron, vertical, it can look like this, for example:
Two custom rune sets (left: "Conqueror of worlds", right: "Necron crypt world") alongside two original Necron rune sets.