And this is the conflict the Orks were created to fight in. The galaxy was once home to a species now known only as the Old Ones. They controlled a little over half the galaxy. The rest belonged to an empire called the Necrontyr. The Necrontyr came from a planet with horrible radiation, and they had evolved to live short lives to compensate for their inevitable death due to super cancer. The Old Ones were masters of genetic engineering, and the Necrontyr pleaded with them to share the secret of long life. But the Old Ones refused. In their envy, the Necrontyr declared war on the Old Ones, and sought to eradicate them. This galaxy-spanning conflict was called the War In Heaven. The Old Ones created the Krorks, perfect super soldiers programmed with instinctual knowledge of weaponsmithing and arcane might, to fight as footsoldiers. A fungal infection that could bloom from a single spore into a ready-made army, infinitely loyal and eternally bloodthirsty.

The Necrontyr couldn't stand up to the might of the Krorks, the Eldar, and the Old Ones' other armies. So they struck a deal with the gods of their kind, stellar parasites called the C'tan, or Star Gods. The C'tan created immortal bodies of living steel for the Necrontyr to inhabit. Ageless and indestructible. The peasant class were furnished with artificial brains powerful enough to understand only simple orders to destroy. The opulent rulers were allowed to keep their memories and personalities, to live eternally. However, they were deceived, for in the bargain, the Necrontyr lost their souls. In Warhammer, the soul is a real thing. It is the connection between a person's mind in the material plane, and the Realm of Souls. Without it, one is cursed to live a half life. Never to truly change or grow. The Necrons, for that is what they were now called, had become forever stagnant. Their souls consumed by the C'tan. In vengeance, the Necrons slew their own gods. Fractured their divine essence into shards and imprisoned the shards in war engines that drained their infinite power for use in battle. And then they finished off the Old Ones. The galaxy was left devastated and essentially barren after the war. So the Necrons went beneath the surface of their billions of worlds and slept, waiting for a galaxy worth ruling to re-grow. While the Krorks devolved into Orks from lack of fighting, and the Eldar became the dominant force in the galaxy.