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Tyranids 3

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14 views

Tyranids 3

Uploaded by

fabriziobackup.07.09.2024
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Tyranids are a space-borne species that have inveigled their way into the

realms of Mankind, as well as those of other xenos, like a disease spreading


through a healthy body.

Tyranid hive fleets consist of millions of biomechanical craft, each serving as


host to an untold number of symbiotic organisms. These creatures evolve and spawn
from a variety of geno-organisms in the ships' reproductive chambers.

All these creatures are born to service the ship, and the ship in turn exists only
to service the needs of the Hive Fleet. Whereas other armies like those of the
Imperium and the T'au fight for conquest or self-defence, and the forces of Chaos
and the Ork tribes battle merely for the chance to wreak violence and havoc, the
Tyranid hive fleets are driven by the will of the Hive Mind, which itself is
motivated by the most ineradicable instinct inherent to all lifeforms --
reproduction, and through reproduction and the acquisition of new genetic traits,
evolution to a better adapted form.

A fully mobilised Tyranid Hive Fleet strikes shock, awe, and terror into even the
most stalwart of humanity's defenders. Even when the xenos threat is eliminated (at
great cost), it will not be long before another Tyranid migration emerges to take
advantage of the situation.

This is what makes the Tyranid species such a threat: it is an evolved meta-
predator capable of out-producing, out-consuming, and out-lasting all other species
it encounters, having done so on a disquietingly unknowable number of prior
occasions across a vast swathe of intergalactic space.

The Hive Mind


Tyrant
A gigantic Tyranid Carnifex tears into an Imperial transport vehicle.

The Magos Biologis of the Imperium categorises each Tyranid hive fleet as a
separate force, an individual entity that competes with other hive fleets for
resources. Indeed, each is self-sufficient, appearing to exhibit different
strategies and developing unique creatures to overcome its prey.

However, the truth is more complex, for each hive fleet is but a splinter of one
greater assemblage. The Tyranids' numbers are vast beyond counting, swarms so large
that they block out the very stars, yet each and every creature is but a single
cell in the living body of a single super-organism.

Every thought and action, every spark of life in the Tyranid species, is bound and
interlinked into a single unfathomable consciousness, a great entity that stretches
across hundreds of light years of space. This gestalt sentience is known as the
"Hive Mind."

It holds all Tyranids in a psychic bond that enables them to act together in
perfect unison. Under the influence of this ancient consciousness, the Tyranids
have fed on countless planets and devoured intelligent civilisations since time
immemorial.

The majority of Tyranid organisms have no distinct minds as a human would


understand it, having been created to perform a single task to the exclusion of all
else. Unless the implacable will of the Hive Mind instructs them to do otherwise,
these organisms simply fulfill the functions for which they were created, acting on
nothing more than instinct.

Larger, more complicated, Tyranid bioforms have been grown to make limited
decisions appropriate to current stimuli and situations, but even these actions are
subordinate to the goals of the Hive Mind.

The Hive Mind's influence is strongest in the vicinity of creatures such as Tyranid
Warriors and the feared Hive Tyrants. These beings are able to communicate with
their kin, not through language, but by a synaptic form of telepathy through which
they relay and channel the will of the Hive Mind.

Under the command of such creatures, the Tyranids operate in perfect unison, slaved
to the psychic imperatives of a single communal intelligence. However, should these
"synapse" creatures be slain, the link between individual creatures and the Hive
Mind will be severed -- many of the lesser organisms will revert to their baser,
animalistic behaviours.

For this reason, the Tyranid swarms do not have only a single commander, but many,
to ensure the Hive Mind's synaptic control is maintained across the entire Tyranid
species.

The Shadow in the Warp


The coming of a Tyranid hive fleet is preceded by a smothering psychic signal that
envelops entire star systems and disrupts all forms of Warp travel and
communication.

Swallowed up by psychic-static, whole worlds suddenly go deathly silent, giving no


clues as to what is unfolding on the surface below, or of what terrors are about to
befall. This is the Shadow in the Warp, and it heralds imminent invasion and
horror.

It is unknown if the Shadow in the Warp is created deliberately by the hive fleets,
or if it is simply a by-product of the Hive Mind's innate synaptic control. In any
case, the Shadow in the Warp creates fear and panic wherever it falls, instilling a
pervasive dread into the minds of a prey world's defenders, plunging entire planets
into misery and despair.

For highly psychic species, such as the Aeldari, or for luckless psykers caught
within this enervating effect, the malaise is magnified tenfold.

Should a psyker attempt to use their otherworldly abilities, the cerebral cacophony
worsens even further; the psychic sound of a billion alien thoughts scratch at
their mind, and unless they are particularly strong-willed they will be pitched
into an insanity where they will repeatedly utter phrases in a tongue too alien to
properly pronounce.

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