how does the phycic abbilities not contact the hive fleet and draw them to erioch

the tyranids don't know where they are and Erioch is resistant to psychic scrying?

or the fact there aren't enough to create a decent ranged signal, genestealers need a certain amount before the hive fleet is drawn to it?

Or the fact that tyranids aren't really interested in making a warp jump just to rescue a few nids when they could instead attack an inhabited world and make a few million nids?

Or perhaps the hive fleet splinter they were captured from was destroyed and they are all that is left of that splinter and none of the other fleets care? take your pick

Perhaps the hive mind views the Watch Tower as no severe threat.

Narkasis Broon said:

Note that Tyranids can't/don't use Warp travel (at least not anymore, according to the latest codex). See the Tyranid Narvhal .

Redemption NL said:

Fair enough, not something I knew, another point in favour of the whole c'tan created tyranids thing though

but the point remains that it takes time to travel and attack a star system, in fact according to that page it takes even more time for nids than for humans. they are going to attack systems based on how much biomass they will recover, individual nids mean nothing to them

Redemption NL said:

Fair enough, not something I knew, another point in favour of the whole c'tan created tyranids thing though

but the point remains that it takes time to travel and attack a star system, in fact according to that page it takes even more time for nids than for humans. they are going to attack systems based on how much biomass they will recover, individual nids mean nothing to them

Aren't the 'Nids extragalactic (i.o.w., from another galaxy and came to the Milky Way because they probably completely devoured the previous galaxy/galaxies they came from)? That would pretty much rule out C'Tan involvement.

True, but there are rumours of old ones leaving the galaxy and stuff. I will admit it is unlikely and pure speculation, but it is a speculation I have seen lying around the internetz. I have also heard rumours about the old ones possibly creating the nids, which seems more likely to me. A species that wipes out all life that might be fed on by necrons and avoids necron tomb worlds and dyson spheres like the plague, also its shadow in the warp is antithetical to attacks by enslavers and chaos, which was a major weakness in their previous life forms. and to top it off they don't travel via warp, so even if the necrons succeed in seperating the milky way galaxy from the warp the nids will still be going around keeping the population of the milky way to an absolute minimum.

It is also worth noting that the Tyranid hive mind is not omnipresent in its connections or onipotent with regard to range and degree of communication. Genestealers cults need to be developed to generate a large enough psychic beacon to attract a Tyranid invasion, for example, and there is at least one hook in MotX where an entire mission is predicated on the swarm being out of hive mind contact with a Lictor due to range but being on its way toward the world in questions generally. This suggests that Erioch's prisoners might have no ability to reach the hive mind at all, certainly even more so if they are impeded by wards from strengthening their psychic beacon by communicating with one another or projecting out toward the swarm.

Also of note, Tyranids don't target large concentrations of biomass out of some sort of desire for efficiency. That much is clear. They strip worlds of all biomass, down to the microscopic level. That is so far past the point of diminishing returns I cannot begin to imagine how much in the way of wasted resources there must be to be that thorough. And that is what they are, not efficient, but thorough. This lends greater weight to the bio-weapon/Necron type theories, but definitely sets them out of the department of super efficient. Efficient would be scooping up plankton and atmosphere, and avoiding any planet that destroys biomass fighting them. Why expend energy creating soldies bio forms and losing them to boot when you can just hit agri worlds, feral worlds, etc. that have limited defenses and plenty of biomass. Most of the biomass on Earth is plant and animal life. Beetles have more biomass than all of mankind. One can safely assume that fighting humans who shoot back is a collossal mistake if you are looking for efficiency, certainly attacking hive worlds or forge worlds is immensely dumb. Even if the human population of a hive world is several times that found on earth, that still does not make for more biomass than the current quantity of ants or cattle on earth. Hit Ranchworld 5 or whatever and then blow back out. Now that would be efficient.

Well, you can still eat the bodies of your own warriors.

Indeed, captain! So long as tyrannids have victory, their biomass books are in the black. And tyrannids as old one/c'tan archeotech? Ridiculous! The 'nids are the materium's antibodies, enemies of all, pontifex of the food chain, ultimate life form. Perfect. (uh oh, my hivemind is showing... )

I would say on the efficiency front, given how hard it is to tell if there is even a planet orbiting a given star in the galaxy, they probably just target planets they know to be inhabited, and it happens that the easiest way to know if a planet is inhabited is to notice that it is giving off radio signals and astropathic messages. I would say that is why they attack built up imperial worlds over like "The World of Plankton", its too hard to find the worlds of plankton

Good point! I'm settin up my chap monastery on a plankton world, now...take that, Tyrannid scum!!

Tyranid resource-harvesting could be super-efficient, we just don't know how much biomass they use on propulsion and any other uses they may have for it. Tyranids will be as efficient as they need to be, being built on a kind of weird evolutionary system. With the universe having a finite duration and with tyranids having the capacity to traverse intergalactic space then there's not much point leaving some material behind to harvest later. But to what end? Surely something as intelligent as the super-mind of the hive must know that the universe will reach an eventual heat-death, collapse or merging with the warp... so maybe all the unknown energy and material usage is some plan to cross inter-universal spaces to consume accross the multiverse? Or some other way to survive past the universes eventual demise?

so, Batty (Emperor forgive me for consorting with genestealers! ) - you assert that the hive fleets are actively seeking to avoid the eventual dissipation of the material universe....you just made tyrannids a whole lot scarier...so, they're plotting an eventual invasion of the Warp, perhaps...though that would presumably die with the materium...perhaps they seek to counteract universal entropic demise in some way...or tunnel their way out of this universe entirely...intriguing!

Zappiel, the Tyranids already began their invasion of the warp.. as while the latest codex mentions they travel via a warping-of-realspace travel (star-trek-ish in nature) the hive mind literally drowns out the local warp-space with it's hsadow and in older material (advanced space crusade) the hiveships contain a wormlike creature that has most of it's body in the warp which teleports troops through the ship to where they are needed by essentially swallowing them at one end and ejecting them out the other.

So the tyranids already drown out and overtake nearby warp-space as well as have made use of lifeforms that exist in both realms (perhaps by absorbing some enslavers?)... seems like a pretty good tyranid invasion of warpspace is already underway... could they be the material realms immunological response to the warp.. or a ctan anti-warp weapon.. or the old-ones attempt to fix the pollution of the warp from their use of it as a weapon and it's consequences? All possible.. but maybe it's just the result of evolution and the struggle to survive and propagate in a world where warp-energy is just another selection-pressure and resource to exploit.

wow, the metaphysical philosophy of tyranids

and here was me thinking the philosophy of tyranids was "OMNOMNOM"

Yes, even ravenous eating machines can have existential purpose!

(though, personally, I shy away from 'the Old Ones did it' or 'the C'tan did it' - I feel the tyranids are perfectly fine without any ancient manipulations; besides, it's still claimed that they're extragalactic, and O.O.'s and C's are from the good ol' Milky Way...)

But, back onto topic, I also feel that, so long as no node critters/leaders are present, dominating their lessers, then the threat of psychic signal to the hive mind is low...(but, should a bunch get loose and start to evolve...best deal with them before too long, or somebody's gonna find Erioch...and eat it!)

In the absence of node creatures i'd expect lesser tyranid species would give birth/hatch a node creature.

After all they would have situations where populations get isolated. Earth have fish that change from female to male if they are missing males in the population. We also have reptiles like the komodo dragon that can give birth to clones of themselves if they are all alone. In some insect hive societies at the death of a queen an ordinary larvae gets turned into a new queen.

So if you have a population of self-perpetuating tyranids such as hormagaunts... then once their numbers get big enough i expect you'd get a tyranid warrior born amongst them. Though one of the older codexes had hive-node-mutants using a warriors head on a gaunts body which could be one solution or an intermediate stage.

Erioch could have quite a problem if their captive population of hunting-gaunts developed a larger-than-usual-crest hormagaunt that hooked them up to the hive mind or just created a localised group-mind significantly magnifying their collective gestalt intelligence and strategic ability.

Becoming intelligent enough to escape and being a very serious problem until the crested-gaunt was killed is an exiting foe. And they'd either have to get rid of all the gaunts (who probably laid eggs all throughout the archives and vents) or discover the population threshold to keep them under and regularly cull the numbers.

They have probably determined the maximum population, and likely keep the things in a gas chamber at most times anyway.

Possibly, Captain, but remember that the tyranid threat at this point is less than 100 years old - we (meaning the Imperium) still may not have grasped the scope of their threat. Presumably the tyranids are not on Erioch for simple sport, but are being actively researched as well.

And, Batty, interesting (if batty ) idea! Could be a one-off adventure, or a whole series, and could even be a major campaign hook...i like the idear of abandoned tyranids eventually spawning a leader node to hook 'em back into the Hivemind....makes them a recurring threat kind of along orkish lines (don't just leave them to rot in the swamp cause they'll eventually overpopulate and call the Hivefleets!)

True, the study of the Tyranid might not be that well known, but the Gas Chamber stays!

Say they are in a series of gas chambers, A horde in each. gets one lot to act up to test the prisons and they get gassed... so then the nodal gaunt triggers the natural adaptive gene in the existing gaunts and they (or the next generation) become immune to the poison (see the bit in the latest tyranid codex about the tyranid vs tau arms race) and suddenly there's a bust-out and the imperium learns a very valuable lesson about the tyranid threat.