So my newest game is starting I was considering having a Hive Fleet that was splintered off the greater whole after it had consumed a tainted world of chaos. Through devouring the world of Chaos the Norn Queen in the orbiting ship became different. Sensing the threat to the entire collective will that splinter was removed. Now under the dictates of a single Norn Queen its generals are more independent. A greater diversity in the communication that is shared between them.

What would be good things to show that makes these Tyranids distinctly different than the rest of the Hive Fleet. Perhaps subtly at first but as time progresses more and more apparent. Instead of just consuming worlds because that is what they do. They now do it to feast on the emotions of a doomed populace etc etc.

An early hint that Something Isn't Right with the 'nids could be to describe them as oddly assemetrical, with odd numbers of limbs and eyes… Odd spikey growths and tentacles that serve no obvious purpose are also good. Then reveal that they have a biomorph other than a zoanthrope that appears to be able to manipulte the Warp…

Hmm I like that idea a lot actually!

Now I am considering would the tainted Norn Queen ally itself with a powerful champion of chaos. Maybe a mutant with what definitely appears to be Tyranid grafts controlling those tainted creations.

Perhaps you could have them NOT devore a world but instead infest and inhabit the world to prolong the suffering of the population and/or so they can worship chaos. Choas is more about corrupting the worlds it over takes rather than just killing everything. The tyranid are at their core about consumption and as such altering this drive would be the single largest aspect that could be "wrong" about them. If you only change the reason they are doing the same old thing. The players will largely see them as the same old thing, as the enemies reasons matter less than the effects of their actions.

GM: oh well this hive fleet is tainted by chaos.

Player: Ok, so whats it doing.

GM: Mindlessly consuming every thing on the planet. Including the bunnies.

Player: And this changes things how?

GM: Now its doing it to be evil instad of just inhuman.

Player: Well that makes all the difference than.

zylosan said:

This is true to. I didn't see them just eating everything and then moving on that would be to much the same. I like the idea of the asymmetricla growths, eyes etc. The great hive structures produce ever number of growing horrors to spread across the worlds. New breeds of ships are built to spread suffering. Where their viruses once broke down the ecosystems of entire worlds they now cause rampant mutations far more terribly than any other thing that Chaos has had since been able to access from the Warp or the Dark Mechanicus. Those with pyschic talent are taken by the worlds by the Corrupted Hive Ship to help it control the tainted creatures since it is harder to produce regular synapse creatures once the Hive severed the greater connection. So its few remaining Zoanthropes are becoming devotees of Tzeentch as their own personalities become more apparent though still bound to the Norn Queen.

A thing to consider regarding chaos interacting with tyranids, is that tyranids are animals without emotions or motives. So instead of having them joining a chaos champion/demon etc. they could be guided or somehow controlled. For exampel: an imperial agri-world is infested by tyranids, but they only consuming the human population and then moving on, leaving the crops or animals to support the chaos champions army.

SolP said:

Norn Queens, SwarmLords, Tyrants, Zoanthropes, etc. are fully sentient and aware creatures still bound to the will of the Hive Mind. So they could still fall. It is only removed from the synapse of greater creatures do the lesser forms switch to primal and instinctive behavior.

To be honest I don't see why Chaos tainted Tyranids would become more intelligent or human-like in their minds, like setting up alliances and stuff like that. The only difference that it would make is probably the presence of tentacles and that the non-Chaos Tyranids will attempt to devour the tainted Tyranids.

I agree with everything that has been said. Both that I'm not sure that Warp Tainted Tyranids are any more dangerouse than standard run of the mill tyranids. And that it sounds like an intreegin hook into an aventure if you can work out all the kinks.

I do feel obligated to point out that the Tyranids themselves are a pretty powerful race in terms of the Warp. Zoanthropes are far from their only psychers. Hive Tyrants are Psychers as are Broodlords and just about every tyranid bigger than a human except for a Carnafex. Synaps itself is a psychic ability. So even cretures that aren't themselves psychers are already related to the warp.

I also have to mention the Shadow of the Warp. Everything I have ever read of the shadow of the warp relates to its effect on Human Psychers, like Librarians and Astropaths. But it is litterally what it is called a shadow of the warp.

My interpretation makes the Hive Mind itself something of a Warp Entity not-unlike a Chaos god or the Emperor himself. Different in many ways but comparable in scale.

For that reason, in my universe at least, Tyranids do not really fall to chaos. Sure they could be warped by it just like anything but being tainted and falling to the warp are not the same IMO

just a point there, how do they became chaos tainted?

If a fleet of tyrannid create a gap in the warp: the shadow, and cut the telepathic com then i think that they are not friendl with warp at all.

Don't even think that they can be convert to chaos…

So far it is my POW but have fun

Thebigjul said:

Sure, Tyranids can't be 'seduced' into willingly joining Chaos like sentient creatures can; but it has long been established that warp energy corrupts matter from our material universe; if this particular splinter fleet's 'Shadow in the Warp' fluctuated (due to some node creatures dying unexpectedly, for instance), they could experience effects similar to a Geller Field failure on an Imperial vessel, resulting in Chaotic mutations.

Or they harvested the world full of mutation and that already tainted experience from the harvested biomass of an entire world altered the hive fleet that it was severed from the entire hive mind.

Well, one way of making Chaos Tyranids worse is making them daemonhosts. Modify the Daemonhost creation tables in Dark Heresy and suddenly you have Elite level Termagants. Or just give them Black Crusade mutations.

And their goals should be different. Not just Tyranid standard 'Biomass, lol'. But Chaos goals. So if they're now Nurglite have them not actually setting down on planets but just raining bizarre spore infections on them till nothing is left alive, or Slaaneshi ones simply capturing and torturing people rather than eating them to prolong the sensation, and Tzeentchian ones doing a series of seemingly random actions that no-one can understand.

The key thing here is to keep the Tyranids' relentless tide feel and their basic incomprehensability while giving them the motivations of servants of the dark gods. I'm doing something similar in my campaign and my players are scared as hell by these mysterious 'new breeds' of centauroid termagants with insane armour and Carnifices made of bronze and surrounded by writhing snakes.

It's sort of an interesting idea. I seem to recall that, in the elder days, they often had Genestealer Cults fail to achieve their endgame, and instead turn to Chaos. The "mainline" Tyranids, though, I don't think they could. One of the things Chaos needs is your soul, and most Nids don't seem like they would have one. Wanton destruction is nice, but that's not Chaos's big goal, or the Dark Mechanicus could crank out a vast army of robots, and just wreck everything. Also, one would have to break synapse control to get tainted in a controllable way, and I see the Tyranids as being able to tell. A race that often tosses itself into acid, so that everything it harvested on a world can get sucked back up, into the bioship, and then reformed again, if need be, could probably sense those stragglers who are no longer "like them", and they'd eat them, like a virus in your body. Whatever the Hive Mind is, it appears to be very powerful, and I don't think that any "lesser" Chaos angle could corrupt its hold; maybe Tzeentch, himself, but that's a bit more direct than they are known for.

That isn't to say I don't like your idea; it's just that GW seemed to like to be sure that the whole universe was Us against Them, and/or Us against Us, with us bein Humanity. If Chaos could ever be bothered to pick on another race, Humans might get too much recovery time. Orks and Nids have a built-in "free from Chaos" tag, even if thhey might seem like Khorne and Nurgle personified, respectively, as do Necrons. The Eldar and Dark Eldar take radical pains to avoid it, and the Tau are vaguely either immune, resistant, or unknown to Chaos. That mostly leaves just Humanity for Chaos to bother, just so the future stays grim and dark. Certainly, other races do, or have done stuff with Chaos, but we've killed many of them.

venkelos, I'm not saying that the Tyranids have necessarily FALLEN. But what they do make is great hosts for chaos power. I mean, a machine doesn't really have a soul (though a machine spirit is borderline), but you can still have Daemon engines, and daemon weapons. Also, bear in mind that in the example of Orks they were made to fight the first daemons. Of COURSE they're immune to Chaos. Ditto, Necrons don't really have much/any of a warp presence and thus don't get possessed. Same with Tau. Eldar CAN be corrupted (hence the creation of Slaanesh) but it's rare. Nids however, in my opinion, rely on the overarching protection of the Shadow/Hivemind to guard them from warp influence. Release them from the Hivemind's control and there is a chance that they could become mutated/possessed like anything else. Also bear in mind the Hive ship that caught the Obliterator virus - this stuff CAN canonically happen. It's just rare. And thus a task for the elite of the Deathwatch.

Love the idea Lily and it's not without precedent either.

From memory I think one of the old 40K tabletop wargame's plot hooks for the Ordo Malleous involved battling a host of Tyranids that had been twisted by the powers of Chaos after feasting on a Chaos tainted planet.

Love the idea of extra and random mutations to represent this too as well as exploring just how the more intelligent sub-species might start to act the longer their link with the hivemind is broken.

As was mentioned somewhere above you could start with them following behaviours as dictated by the chaos powers that are infuencing them but as they become more self-aware the more powerful beings may also become aware of this subtle influence and may either choose to embrace it, or else take their new found independance (and veritible army of tainted 'nids) and start exploring their own goals for the first time in their existence.

The potential for story telling and development of this new tainted branch is limited only by your imagination. Good luck with it and love to hear how it went somewhere down the line!

AlphariusOmegon7 said:

Sry, I was mostly just saying that I don't know how easy it would be, much of the time. The Hive Mind has a pretty powerful sway on them, and if it didn't have the right "signal" other Nids might just eat it. I was thinking of ants, and such. When their pheromones change, their siblings can no longer identify them, and kill them, which would keep Tainted Nids in a small, shrinking number. For the bigger ones, I don't know if Shadow in the Warp would shield them, but it could. The idea of a Norn Queen level organism, a direct conduit of the Hive Mind, falling seems unlikely, but that's not to say it can't.

Personally, I LIKE the idea of tainted Nids. I have often considered Nurgle-touched Tyranids an interesting idea. Also, I have long been a whiny complainer on how so many things in 40k get a "free pass" on Corruption so much of the time, leaving mostly only Humans and the Imperium to receive the full attentions of Chaos, and every other alien menace, too. Khorne Orks and Nurgle Nids are both things I wish 40k might've done. Either could be a mighty weapon for the respective RPwr.

Sure, it CAN happen, and I rather wish it more occasionally WOULD happen, so run with it.

a long time ago I was reading a story in which the heroes ( it might have been space wolfs or grey knights?) ran across a group of gaunts that had been corrupted by nurgle. the only way that they could tell was that the gaunts looked sick and nobody could ever remember seeing sick gaunts before. later on I think they found some statue dedicated to nurgle in the hive ship or what ever the gaunts where coming from. wish I could be more helpful. on a personal note the image of a khorne berserker riding a corrupted carnifex is just too cool to pass up.

Tyranids have emotions, at least oncee not controlled by the hive mind. Hunger at least.