So, 40k theorists. What would happen when the psychic overwhelming Tyranid Hive fleets eat their way to the Eye of Terror? Will Chaos corrupt the single mindedness of the Hive Mind or will the Tyranids overwhelming psychic power put them on Emperor-level and effectively make them the 5th Chaos God?

And assuming that the Tyranid ate all the nearby systems to the Eye, would that weaken it as there is a significantly lower population of sentient minds to fuel the Immateriums emotional energy?

SJE

Chaos Genestealer Cult. Check it out, it's been done in the old table top edition complete with fluff. Think late 80's early 90s.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Genestealer_Cult

The Cult Limosine was awsome, especialy with gattling guns in the headlights.

You could have a Khornate genestealer cult, that was a favorite back in the day. Khorne plus genestealers BRUTAL

Back to the overall posters idea.

Chaos can and would corrupt Tyranid flesh. It can and would warp Tyranid hive mind/minds. But since the Tyranids are so monstrous and alien, it would make little difference to their victims, and would be difficult to spot. What is really the difference between a chaos spawn and a hive creature? Both look like a monstrous mess. The difference being its origins.

they would find themselves having the same problems as the imperium with chaos. What I think is a critical difference is that because they are a hive mind, the lack of individuality leads to less chaos, emotionaly, psychicly too.

The Tyranids are like an organic BORG race. Yes, borg came after. anyways. The big difference i see. Is that whole hives would either be corrupted and resist or not. I think the whole race is not so unified as the whole would immediately become chaos. Though it might if enough hive mind nodes turned, or the highest in the heiracchy of nodes turned.

It is possible that turning to chaos would break the hive mind link, and make them rogue. if they go rogue, the hive mind would view them as any other alien organism and attempt to consume them.

Storm of Iron has a brilliant scene with the Iron Warriors using captured Tyranid vessels that have been corrupted using a variant of the Oblitarator virus.

Tyranids would be corruptable, and if corrupted in the right/ wrong way a unseful tool for Chaos.

Are you sure that was from storm of iron? I've read that book, but can't seem to remember anything about nid ships in it.

I'm sure. When the Iron Warriors a doing the main landing there's a short paragraph about some of the landing vessels being Nid

bio ships that were captured and corrupted by a variant on the Obliterator virus which severed their connection to the Hive Mind and making them into docile slaves. They infect that Tech Priest the same way. I do like the thought of a unreversable virus turning someone or something into a Chaos slave. Might have to suborn the idea for DH.

Old fluff aside, what part of the Tyranid hive mind is really corruptible? The Four chaos gods are aspects of the human psyche at its worst, the Tyranids don't really fall prey to any of those. They only hunger. The 'shadow in the warp' the Tyranids generate is like a god itself. I'm sure the tyranids can be warped by chaos stuff, but the interesting bits of chaos, the daemonhood and all that, are probably something that doesn't affect them. I assume Genestealer Cults were (are?) corruptible because of the warp-corruptibility of a human hybrid.

If the Tyranids were to wipe out the majority of life in the galaxy would there even be Chaos Gods left to fight? The gods are sustained in part by the minds sentient creatures. At what point do they starve?

The gods arent sustained by motal sentiant beings, but by that which makes them different apparent in human society. Tyranids are perfect tools for chaos undivided. They serve each god in one way.

Khorne- The blood they spill, Tzeentch- They change a society from human to alian in a matter of weeks to months, Nurgle- Everywhere they go, they break down and destroy everything, Nids are the perfect plague.. and finally Slannesh- They are perfection incarnate, symmetrical and pure in their purpose. They are beauty in its most dangerious form.

The chaos gods may thrive now BECAUSE of the tyranids.

But at what point does the psychic shadow the Tyranids create blot out everything else? Astropaths can't shoot through it, it disrupts warp travel, imagine what it does to the daemons?

Ira said:

Or, as I've seen suggested at times, the Hive Mind is a Chaos God...

Bear with me here, and I'll explain.

The Tyranids originate beyond our galaxy. If the Chaos Gods as we know them are reflections of the thoughts, whims, desires, vices and virtues of the sapient creatures within the galaxy, then presumably similar entities could exist in the Warp at points corresponding to other Galaxies.

Thus would be the origin of what is now the Hive Mind - a gestalt intellect within the Immaterium, derived from the thoughts and impulses of creatures unlike anything in our own galaxy, and alien even to the more familiar intellects we know as the Chaos Gods.

In theory, this gives the Tyranids remarkable resilience to the influence of the "local" Chaos Gods... because they're already controlled by one of their own, one that has become so powerful and dominant that every generation of every living being within the species that originated it are spawned with no will of their own, utterly enslaved to the god they created - a god of relentless, remorseless hunger.

(Slightly in-character here)

Only flaws I see with all this:

You actually think the Hives will reach the eye? Heresy! The Imperium of man will not falter. *cough* Um, now where was that Trader ship? I need to um, go exploring for a few decades...yeah.

There are too many other forces at work. I doubt the forces of Chaos will re-act well to Tyranids, for tools or otherwise. They are equal oppoutrunity targets as well, let's not forget. Choas Marine, Space Marine..all of it is resources to that which consumes without end. They're gone should the Hive reach this stage. Even I would pray for the already dammed at ths point. Well after a few bolter clensings anyways.

Necrons. As the anti-thesis of life in the flesh, would they want to see such a thing? And if so would they not reach the star as well? I shrudder to think of such things. Best not to let this pass in the first place. Organic hunger vs Deathless anger? To be honest the conflict would be more eternal then the Emperor himself, throne bless him.

(OOC:)

In most ways I have to agree. The Tyranids are already chaos incarnate in most ways. They consume and even destroy themselves in favour of making more materials. They may act as a singular unit, but even so, there is no further hierarchy and everything is wasted, and re-made. Sounds like Chaos already to me. Should they touch the star the only thing that would change would be the addition perhaps of some serious warp taint included in their 'matrix'. Personally I reckon they're already in touch with chaos. It would be like the forces of chaos touching it. 'meh', somethings going to happen good or bad. After all chaos is random. It could destroy the tyranids for all we know. (Wouldn't complain). Choas touching chaos = negated?

And such is the world of 40K. There is no one great threat, and no one single unified force against one other. It's all up to the authors and owners as the game world evolves as it somewhat has in the past 2+ decades.

Well a few things-

Chaos is a bit stuck against Tyranids, since the traditional Chaos methods dont work against them. If the Hive mind is one single distributed consciousness, then there is not a plurality of ambitions and desires for Chaos to tempt and bargain with. Nor do the Nids have any curiosity about daemonic sites or artifacts. If a world is close to the Warp, just waiting for some foolish Governor to unearth the Black Stone of McGuffin and open the Gates of Hell, then the Hive fleet will just eat every last organic thing on the planet and there is going to be no one left to open the gates of hell. Indeed even if they did open due to the death throes of a world, the daemons are going to be pretty lonely on their airless, lifeless ball of rock.

Indeed since Daemons can only exist for long periods of time in the real world through the summons of psykers or cults, thats going to come to an abrupt halt as the number of entities who can do that for them drops to zero.

As for the Necrons, I think their response will be their historical reaction. If the Nid's eat all sentient life then the C'tan and Necron will go back to their stasis tombs (as they did after the Enslaver plague) and sleep till life re-populates itself in the galaxy.

Overall, I see the Tyranid hive mind as having the potential to be a God of Order and Hunger who may well eat the other Chaos Gods in due time.

SJE

But the tyranids are a 'form' of sentient life of srots, I doubt the necrons would lie still while a life form runs rampent?

Then again this is open for debate as I'd like to see something in a more substantional BL written form of a necron vs tyranid conflict (or evidence of something otherwise to discourage my thought on this.)

Probally the freshest take on the idea. the forieng chaos god idea that is.

a necron vs tyranid book would be awsome, but abstract and unmarketable. unless wirtten from a human observer caught in it.

SJE said:

One flaw in this idea...

The Enslavers started to destroy all life in the galaxy. All the C'Tan/Necrons had to do was wait for the galaxy to repopulate.

The Tyranids destroy all life and any planet that it's on by absorbing the atmosphere and water - without these, life can't evolve again to repopulate, and as such the C'Tan would never come out of 'hibernation' if they went into it again. It'd be in their best interests to fight the Tyranids.

This discussion reminds me of Rifts (from Palladium). Specifically the Mechanoids.

The mechanoids were a race that hated all humanoids. Period. They were insane (part of what made them hate humanoids). After several millenia of fighting, some of them went sane. This caused them to be horrified at what they were doing and feeling (they had hive mind as well). This led to a civil war betweeen the Mech's and the ABM's (Aberrant Mechanoids).

I think, if they were corrupted, you would have a similar situation. The corrupted 'Nids, vs. the uncorrupted 'Nids.