Hello again. I'll get right to the point.

In another thread I wrote a little once about an idea I had for the final and ultimate invasion of the Tyranids. I called it Hive Fleet Typhon, and since then I've been thinking about something I could add to this fleet that would really give it some teeth, that would leave even Chapter Masters and Titan Legions speechless. And then suddenly it just popped in my head.

"It" is called Echidna. As Typhon was known as the greatest monster in all of Greek mythology, so is Echidna known as "The Mother of All Monsters." Basically, Echidna is a Tyranid the size of a planet. A Planet. Surrounded in all directions by the endless vessels of Tyranid void forms, Echidna is the penultimate spawning ground of Tyranid forces. Not just filling the skies, or crawling on its chitin surface, but filling endless labyrinths burrowed throughout its form, no other place in the galaxy can claim to host more of the beasts than this abomination.

That's the concept, at least. I've got some more ideas, but I could use some help in fleshing (ugh, pun) out my living planet. Chief among questions being, how does it defend itself against exterminatus weapons? It has to have some way, else the good guys will just take one look, say 'nope', and blow the Terranid to kingdom come.

If you think the ideas interesting, and have any ideas or concerns about it, I'm listening. What do you think?

Chief among questions being, how does it defend itself against exterminatus weapons? It has to have some way, else the good guys will just take one look, say 'nope', and blow the Terranid to kingdom come.

...

... Surrounded in all directions by the endless vessels of Tyranid void forms, ...

You mean more defense than that?

Besides, I really like "Terranid".

Isn't what you are describing essentially what a Hive Fleet already is? A massive vortex of coalesced tyranids the size of (a) planet(s)?

In a way, but this is meant to be more of a setting than an actual enemy. Tyranids, from what I've seen, are always on the attack. They're always invading, always swarming, and we're always trying to hold them off. I wanted to flip that aspect around, present a target for once that we would have to take. Have you ever heard of any force, of any race, launching a boarding action against a Tyranid Hive ship? I haven't. But the idea of fighting your way through a body the size of a spaceship has an inhuman appeal to it, don't you think? It'd make for quite an adventure.

Another part of the concept is placing something strategically vital at the heart of this world. Tyranids are a hive mind, right? Well, what if this world, this Echidna, was the center of that mind? The queen, so to say, coordinating whole fleets of Tyranids? (Or if you believe some of the wilder rumors, maybe it houses the C'tan who is rumored to have created the Tyranids.)

Have you ever heard of any force, of any race, launching a boarding action against a Tyranid Hive ship?

Didn't the SW do something like that?

And technically speaking, what would be the difference between boarding a Hive Ship and a Hive World? Both would be swarming with Tyranids, and thus be equally suicidal, no?

Have you had a look into Final Sanction/Oblivion's Edge? Might be at least close to what you are looking for.

You can find those here .

They have boarded one. In one of the Ultramarines novels (which escapes me) they go aboard a big hive ship, smash up a norn queen and leg it, having crippled the hive tendril attacking the world. Exterminatus defence would be the ships. A) Suicidal intervention. B) taking out ships before the launching of their stupid doom bombs anyways.

The kill team in my campaign boarded and destroyed a small Tyranid Bioship. It was a hellish ordeal for them...so good!

Sigh, guess I've got a lot of reading to do. Thanks for all the examples guys. I'll check them out.

Lunate, by SW do you mean Storm Wardens? Because I love that chapter and I'd love to know where to look for that bit on them.

Still don't want to give up on my idea, I made it for my own Hive Fleet after all. But still, thank you for the help.

Lunate, by SW do you mean Storm Wardens? Because I love that chapter and I'd love to know where to look for that bit on them.

Space Wolves, sorry. I'm used to SW being their historical abbreviation, though it could also be applied to the Wardens.

Still don't want to give up on my idea, I made it for my own Hive Fleet after all. But still, thank you for the help.

No need to give up on it! You could also "take the best of both worlds" (hah) and do something in-between, like ... a Tyranid Death Star sort of thing, not quite a whole planet, but a lot bigger than any ship, that moves with its own (smaller) Hive Fleet.

There was a short story on some Blood Angels doing that somehwere too. They boarded a ship and all died except for a Tac Marine. The Libby I think went back inside to face a Tech Priest who had been corrupted by the Tyranids inside a derelict Bio ship. As always, the details escape me

Has it ever been officially established how Tyranids travel the warp? If not, you could say that the standard bioships are limited to sublight speeds, and to travel between systems they have to link up to a massive warp-capable 'mother ship', which would make for a good planetoid-sized target for your scenario.

I'm not even sure if Tyranids travel the warp at all. They use Narvhals ( alt. source ) to allow vessels of the hive fleet to travel faster than light.

Yeah ... Tyranids don't use the warp. Or, at least, they didn't. Not sure if that's changed with the relatively recent 'everybody uses the warp' kick that's been going around.

Yeah, I preferred it when the Necrons had their own weird way of traveling around the universe, instead of just hijacking the web way. Not that I don't like the idea of the webway, just wanted some diversity out there.

Well, I picked up the Valedor novel and its supplemental short stories (great books for eldar fans) and have a batter idea of how hive fleets work now. Ships of the Tyranid aren't really covered in Deathwatch, so it was interesting to learn about their weird weapons (tentacles, clouds of razor crystals, weird beak torpedoes). But what caught my eye was the norn ship, the so-called 'mother' ship of each tendril of a hive fleet. That sounds a lot like what I wanted Echidna to be, if on a smaller scale.

I think I'll take Lynata's suggestion, and turn Echidna into a living Death Star. Hmm, it would have to have some kind of Exterminatus grade weapon. Ooh, one that could shatter planets apart, breaking it into smaller chunks that her Hive Fleet could consume all the faster. I even have an image of it drifting into gas giants, sucking up oceans of chemical cocktails to feed it on its journey.

Hmm, what kind of superweapon would a Tyranid ship have? A super-acid, to cover a world and dissolve all life like the Life Eater virus does? Or a writhing mess of colossal tendrils with drill tips, to rip continents apart in hours?

I like the ideas you already have! Although I suppose the acid is a bit reaching, given how much you'd need to cover an entire planet, and how much even a moon-sized "ship" could carry (especially in addition to all the other things that would require space). However, how about converting that idea into some sort of "point defence organ" that sprays clouds of acidic mist to attack any enemy that gets too close?

It might be a cool idea for the players to have their THawk begin to dissolve around them, first the atmosphere being leaked through an increasing number of holes, then the engines stopping to work, leading to a crash-landing .. and the grave thought of it having been a one way trip. Unless, that is, the players are clever enough to find their own way back to friendly lines, such as by sneaking aboard a spore pod or a tyrannocyte, and rigging it to launch (by stimulating its nerves?), then hopping off mid-flight and sending a distress signal, hoping that some Imperial ship picks them up before they burn up in the planet's atmosphere...

That second idea with the tendrils sounds spot-on, though. It could anchor itself in low orbit and use tentacle-drills to latch onto the planet, providing it with the opportunity to disgorge millions of tyranids in a minimum of time via an orbital elevator , or alternatively causing massive earthquakes by forcibly shifting tectonic plates around.

The former in particular would mimick the behaviour of a virus, just magnified to a planetary scale. It's always fun to think of the tyranids like an upscaled viral infection!

Another possible superweapon would be some kind of oversized gauss cannon that uses bioelectromagnetism to accelerate colossal spikes of metal salvaged from asteroids or other planets the world-ship has come across on its odyssey. It would literally enable the Hive to nuke a world from orbit and then swoop in to gobble up the remains. "None of the fallout. All of the fun."

Hello again. I'll get right to the point.

In another thread I wrote a little once about an idea I had for the final and ultimate invasion of the Tyranids. I called it Hive Fleet Typhon, and since then I've been thinking about something I could add to this fleet that would really give it some teeth, that would leave even Chapter Masters and Titan Legions speechless. And then suddenly it just popped in my head.

"It" is called Echidna. As Typhon was known as the greatest monster in all of Greek mythology, so is Echidna known as "The Mother of All Monsters." Basically, Echidna is a Tyranid the size of a planet. A Planet. Surrounded in all directions by the endless vessels of Tyranid void forms, Echidna is the penultimate spawning ground of Tyranid forces. Not just filling the skies, or crawling on its chitin surface, but filling endless labyrinths burrowed throughout its form, no other place in the galaxy can claim to host more of the beasts than this abomination.

That's the concept, at least. I've got some more ideas, but I could use some help in fleshing (ugh, pun) out my living planet. Chief among questions being, how does it defend itself against exterminatus weapons? It has to have some way, else the good guys will just take one look, say 'nope', and blow the Terranid to kingdom come.

If you think the ideas interesting, and have any ideas or concerns about it, I'm listening. What do you think?

So it's a biological version of Unicron?

Okay Tyranid world, Let's see...

Even if it has a small brain it would still be the size of Belgium! So i'm thinking hypermassive pyschic blast: Think of a Zoanthrope on a planetary scale. Aaaand I've just realised that would be the 'nid equivalent of the Deathstar!

It would have giant hives made out of chitin and bone filled with living torpedos: Giant combinations of worm/wasp that give the world the equivalent of a Macross misille spam attack.

The pressense of the hive mind would be so total that it creates a psychic trobb that can be felt in near orbit. Chaos daemons would find it extremely difficult to materialise anywhere near Echidna. Enemy (non necron) fleets near orbit would need to make leadership tests in order to do stuff.

In the warp it's much worse. Don't plan on dropping your attack fleet out warp anywhere near the planet. Try the next subsector and then use realspace drives.

Easiest way against extreminatus weapons would be have smaller (cruiser sized?) bio- organisms intersept the incoming ordnance. Similar to how battlefleets operate on earth today.

From the Tyranid Attack rulebook: Teleporter worm/cysts. This would allow Echidna to make teleport attacks on enemy vessels. (As in; your bridge is now full of carnifex)

Stinger vents: Giant diamond hard spikes of metal bonded cithin (or whatever- they are really tough.) they seal off fleshy tunnels several miles deep. These tunnels all emerge in a vast underground shamber filled with water. When Eshidna fires the stinger vents it drops several bio acids and other compounds into the lake chamber causing the water to turn instantatious into steam, the pressure is such that it rips of the stingers and launches them at the enemy at catastrophic speeds!

(This is based on a an actual "theoretical" last ditch weapon concept in case the USA gets invaded by aliens and they have somehow lost their nuke missiles.)

There is a Marvel Comics villain called Ego the Living Planet , which is a sentient planet that occasionally runs afoul of Marvel's 'heavy hitters'. When the heroes land on the nightmarish surface, they are attacked by the planet's natural defenses. This could provide a good source of insperation.

+++Exterminatus warhead vs Planetsized xenoform. +++ Imperial archives/Ordo Xenos+++

+++ Adeptus Administarum research reveals 31% veracity level. +++

+++Notes: Tampering suspected by AL infiltrators +++

+++ HyDr4D0m1Na7u5 Files is 98% Veracity level. No manipulation detected.+++

+++ Tought for today: There is no propaganda, There's only the Emperor.+++

Wow, love all the ideas. This could really turn into a nightmare for anybody in the Terranid's path. Recent novels have been suggesting that just about every reasoning race in the galaxy would have to team up to fight off the final Hive Fleet, and with stuff like this I can see why.

Ohh, now I want to submit the idea to GW and see if they like it.

My best bet to beat it would be the 'crons. Anyone lese would have problems getting near it and keep coherent toughts due to teh hive's psychic trobb. Now i kinda wanna see this thing statted.

Remember:

Psychic trobb: Crew on nearby enemy vessels must make a leadership/int tets in order to function normally.

Daemons have major penalties to instability tests. Troops cannot be teleported to the surface.

Psychic powers: Catalyst, The Horror.

Hypermassive psychic beam: psychic shooting attack. (similar to blackstone fortress/planetkiller)

Living torpedoes: superheavy devourer

Stinger vents: super heavy spinefist

Gun cysts: superheavy biotitan weapons

It would also have lots of spore systs: basically its atmosphere would be choked with spore mines.

Perhaps the webway could be used too. It's somewhat isolated from the shadow in the warp, but Eldar are still somewhat sensitive to what's around it. (Iyandeni Eldar fight this with the use of wraith spirits) Way seers can create short, temporary tunnels that

lead where they wish. And if Eldar warriors are too sensitive to survive the hive mind on the surface, let other species lead the charge...

I'd rule that anything crewed by a wraith spirit should be less afected by the psychic trobb than normal eldar. Webway might work yeah. But no warp spider jumps!

How about the Eldar ramming Echidna with a craft world? If you know what the Eldar think of ramming and how prized a craft world is... that should really get across the horror and desperation of the situation, no?

Orks, orks will fight anything. I wonder what the psy throbb would do to them tough. Maybe lots of them going weirdboy and doing psychic powers. Actually orks could be qsuite dangerous, I read this new article/story in WD a while ago, about orks vs necrons and teh feeling i got was that even the 'crons were like "okay how did they do that? that shouldn't work!"