Tyranids Deep Dive - The Great Devourer | Warhammer 40K Lore

it's been about 20 years since I first became obsessed with the Grim Dark Universe of Warhammer 40K and I can remember being about 12 or 13 years old and looking at all of the factions on the Shelf at my local game store trying to pick which one I was going to play and that's when I saw it the carnifex and all its Glory honestly it was love at first sight it was part of this faction of terrifying spacebug dinosaurs that had these giant guns that didn't shoot bullets but instead launched torrents of Bio acid and swarms of flesh-eating worms me and my buddy Ryan pulled our money together and split the battle from a Crag box and the rest is history even though my old tyranid army is long gone at this point there's still one of my favorite factions in the entire setting they're this Unstoppable Cosmic horror a rampaging horde of terrifying bioforms that descend upon unsuspecting worlds kill literally everything on the planet and then melt everything down into biomass which they then suck back up into the sky and into their ships to make even more tyranids although a lot of people tend to dismiss the tyranids as a faction of big dumb animals this honestly couldn't be further from the truth as they're one of if not the smartest and most deadly factions in the entire setting like did you know that every single tyranid all 100 billion quintillion of them are all technically part of the same animal and they all share this terrifying single Consciousness that knows everything about everything that it's ever eaten they're like one of those Aspen forests if you know every single one of those trees was actually a hyper-evolved apex predator that hungered for the Flesh of man and despite how much of a galaxy ending threat the tyranids actually are documented sightings of them only date back a few thousand years so what exactly are they and where did they come from what kind of tactics do they use and what's the deal with all of their weird gross looking organic weapons what does a tyranid Invasion actually look like and probably most importantly of all are they real really as terrifying as some people claim they are are they really one of the most powerful factions in all of Warhammer or is it just kind of overblown well today we're going to be getting to the bottom of that and a whole lot more as there's a lot to cover with the tyranids as I said before they're one of my favorite factions and the only thing about them that kind of bums me out is that they're not playable in nearly as many of the 40K video games well thankfully the sponsor of this video Warhammer 40 000 tacticus agreed with this assessment and they just added them to the game as a playable faction so a quick shout out to them and then we're gonna dive head first into the grimdark if you've been watching my channel for a while now then you know I'm a big fan of Warhammer 40 000 tacticus but if I'm being honest with you I have one major complaint about the game and that's currently the lack of tyranids assure you get to fight against them as one of the main enemies but it's not the same I need to be able to play as everyone's favorite psychic dinosaur space bugs well it turns out great minds think alike and the developers agreed with this sentiment as they're finally bringing the tyrannus to the game as playable faction with their first hero the neurothrope dropping on Sunday August 20th the developers let me plan one of their test servers in order to try this guy out and I gotta say I am definitely impressed first and foremost the neurothropes rules really play into their lore of being one of the most powerful psychic entities that exist within the Grim dark future allowing them to unleash devastating psychic attacks that each inflict their target with brain worms that gradually increases their damage the longer they stay alive not to mention their unique tyranid trait shadowing the warp reduces the effectiveness of any psychers in their vicinity proving once and for all that they are the dominant psychic life form I'm super excited for this release and can't wait to see what other tyranid characters end up getting added to the lineup if you want to start playing Warhammer 40 000 tacticus for yourself then go ahead and click on the link in the description of this video download the game for free and use code Wes Hammer 2023 for some awesome rewards a huge heartfelt thank you to Warhammer 40 000 tacticus for being such an amazing long time sponsor of this channel Channel the galaxy of the 41st Millennium is full of terrifying alien and heretical factions each driven onward into the future by their own nefarious ideals ideologies and Ambitions goals that are antithetical to the continued survival of the human species however amongst them is one that is not like the others one that doesn't seek to build its own Empire it isn't driven by some lofty ambition it holds to no higher moral code and doesn't believe as the Imperium does that the stars are theirs by Birthright the tyranids are driven only by a compulsion to feed by an animalistic desire to consume everything in their path and in the Grim darkness of the far future every other sentient species Great and Small is in the eyes of the hive mind nothing more than prey they are much like a Galaxy spanning swarm of locus that eats everything in their path the population of entire worlds included their advances Relentless and never-ending and all planets caught in their path can be rendered to nothing but Rock in the span of only few weeks barely even a blip in time to the infinite predatory intelligence of the hive mind with the exception of demons which come from the alternate parallel dimension of the warp the tyranids are the only faction in the Grim darkness of the far future that is not native to the Milky Way having traveled in possible distances through the black voids of space in search of new hunting grounds Imperial Scholars have yet to agree on why exactly the tyranids were drawn to our galaxy in the first place perhaps they were drawn by the Light of the astronomicon maybe they already consumed everything else that exists and the Milky Way exists as the last Bastion of sentient life maybe they were running away from something a cataclysmic Cosmic event or an even bigger Predator fleeing into the infinite darkness of deep space rather than face Extinction these debates are ultimately meaningless it is simply a primal coping mechanism of the human mind to attempt to gain control to know the unknowable and make sense of the unexplainable all while the Imperial real Scholars continue to waste time and resources pursuing such lines of thought the tyranids march across the void bringing death to Untold billions rendering every living thing they encounter down into gelatinous biomass with which they make even more tyranids they travel through space in massive fleets of enormous void-borne creatures that act as vessels for the infinitely complex swarm of tyranid ground units spanning from the diminutive swarm-based Rippers and gaunts to the massive biotitans and ship-sized Krakens these organisms just ate inside of birthing sacks their Form and Function dictated by the will of the hive mind bestowing upon them all manner of terrifying and disgusting alien Weaponry in War gear they are Evolution on steroids billions of years of evolutionary advantages distilled into one species the ultimate predators that can change their form and adapt to new methods of Warfare on the Fly undergoing radical Transformations that would take other species millions of years to achieve seemingly an in the blink of an eye when the high Fleet descends upon an unsuspecting World it does so simply defeat it cares not of Pride honor or even Vengeance as such human concepts are beneath the omniscient hive mind their arrival is preceded by Decades of Calamity continent-sized hurricanes devastating earthquakes floods and tsunamis large enough to drown entire cities Rampage across a planet's surface as the high Fleet wreaks havoc on the planet's gravitational fields from multiple light years away massive cult up risings will occur as those who believe the tyranids to be their gods and the approaching High Fleet to be their deity come to deliver salvation to the faithful will rise up causing the world to collapse into infighting and Civil War rendering it defenseless and ready for consumption soon after two vast shadows will fall across the planet one an invisible psychic disturbance known as the shadow in the warp that causes widespread feelings of anxiety panic and impending doom while driving psychically attuned Mortals into madness all astropathic communication is rendered useless and the Doom world is left unable to call for help then there's the second Shadow a much more literal vast Darkness spreading across the surface of the planet as thousands of Hive ships arrive in the upper atmosphere dislodging an endless torrent of miatic spores so vast they blot out the sun each and every one of them bringing with them a ravenous payload of hungry tyranids triggering swarms of alien infantry Rampage across the surface and a tidal wave of claws teeth and spines well Warrior units wielding all manner of terrifying organic Weaponry issue silent commands to the Swarm liquefying everything in their path with guns that fire not bolt or bullet but torrents of horrendously corrosive bio acids voracious pathogens and living ammunition that burrows into their targets ripping them apart from the inside out in spectacular explosions of visceride and Gore still larger creatures arrive rampaging hordes of carnifexes that trample everything in their wake and towering biotitans that Sunder fortresses and blast apart any that would dare resist the Swarm over the course of the next several weeks every living thing on the planet will be consumed before the fleet Retreats back into the void in search of more prey the tyranids are Armageddon given form and represent possibly the greatest threat the galaxy has ever seen if the other sentient races are not able to set aside their differences if they're not capable of ceasing their Petty squabbling then the tyranids will bring about the death of every living thing in the Milky Way galaxy they are the harbingers of the end the destruction of all things and will figuratively and literally consume the entire galaxy leaving it as a swirling mass of barren worlds and dying Stars before returning once more to the endless black currants in search of distant galaxies with which to Prey Upon beginning the cycle anew so with all that said what exactly are the tyranids well despite the overwhelming Cosmic war of a bunch of unknowable alien ships that show up and eat everything on a planet and then suck it up into the sky before moving on to do it again they are actually probably the most straightforward faction in all of Warhammer 40K they are creatures of hunger whose primary objective is only the consumption of every piece of organic matter in the Galaxy be it micro Planet animal or person after consuming said matter they render it into an organic slurry collectively referred to as biomass which they can use to make even more tyranids who then in turn go out to harvest even more biomass and make even more tyranids it's a remarkably straightforward cycle although the tyranids have only been documented within the boundaries of the Milky Way for less than a thousand years considering that they come from outside of our galaxy many Imperial scholars believe that they are potentially billions of years old and exist as an amalgamation of countless compound leaps of evolution that have turned them into the Galaxy's apex predators whereas other sentient species have their evolution dictated by the prevalence of certain desirable traits that make them more likely to survive and reproduce the tyranid's evolution is dictated by an omniscient intelligence known as the hive mind a pool of infinite wisdom that can systematically decide which traits to utilize and which to discard whether they have been generated by the tyranid organisms themselves or were traits absorbed from other species through the collection of biomass and I really want to take a minute to highlight that because that's kind of crazy when you think about it when the tyranid show up on a planet they eat literally everything and they've been potentially doing this for billions of years and thus have encountered a simply inconceivable amount of different variations of DNA think about it plants animals microbes and sentient species from across the universe there are an estimated 8.7 million unique living species on r planet and an estimated 300 million life-supporting planets within our galaxy so if for the sake of this argument the tyranids really have consumed at least one entire galaxy before showing up in the Milky Way then we can take 8.7 million and multiply it by 300 million when we do that we get the absolutely ridiculous number of 2.6 quadrillion separate unique species that have been harvested and that's not including all of the species in our own Galaxy including human beings and Space Marines by the way not only does this plethora of genetic information provide for them a simply inconceivable amount of data to pull from to the point where there isn't a single mystery surrounding organic life left for them to discover but by using that DNA they can craft literally anything they could possibly need new units weapons ships organic War gear or pretty much anything else for all intents and purposes a species like that with a collective Consciousness is kind of like a literal God it's why they're so unbelievable difficult to fight against even chaos Gods like pop and ergle absolutely hate the tyranids because every time he comes up with a new horrifying disease even if it seems to be effective against them for a split second the tyranids just dip into their infinite DNA bank and grab a gene from some ancient extinct species that makes them immune to it and then replicate this through all of their units although they come in seemingly infinite different forms every single tyranid is an organism of visceral horror creatures bristling with razor-sharp claws spikes and fangs that can tear A Man Apart in the blink of an eye they don't utilize technology in the same way that we would understand it as at their core they are a faction of animals and all of their technology is organic in nature for example all of the ships that they use to Ferry their armies across the stars in their never-ending Pursuit Of Prey are simply the largest individuals of their species whereas other species have wasted time and resources developing things like technology art language infrastructure structure society and vast civilizations every single advancement the tyranids have made since that fateful day they crawled out of the primordial ooze or some Imperial Scholars suggest a test tube on some long dead alien world hundreds of billions of light years away have been specifically tuned to making them even more deadly and efficient killing machines take for example their organic Weaponry strange quivering blades and bulbous breathing firearms that although certainly gross and alien looking at least bear a passing resemblance to more traditional Weaponry utilized by mankind like the trusty bolters and power swords of the adeptus astartes but don't let their semi-recognizable forms fool you however as they aren't so much a piece of equipment and more so exist as an entirely separate living organism that has been biologically grafted to their host their weaponry and War gear is entirely organic and comes in a wide array of different forms each existing as a specific hyper adaptation designed to make them more effective in whatever role the hive mind has tasked them with infiltrator organisms that must maintain undetected for long periods of time May develop chameleonic flesh in order to be rendered nearly invisible or air bladder cushioned joints and bushels of specially designed hairs designed to eliminate all sound the creature generates by moving whereas the more monstrous tyranny creatures are likely to develop thick heavy carapaces of tightness armor in order to turn them into living battering rams immune to all but the largest of Imperial Firearms honestly when we look at any given tyranid organism what we're really looking at is not just a single animal but but a colony a collection of separate living organisms each blending together in a perfect Unison of spectacular lethality just about every single one of their physical components could be considered a weapon or piece of War gear from the obvious fangs Claws and quivering undulating gun analogs to their multiple organs that each provide the creature with a particularly deadly advantage in combat a tyranid fighter is never unarmed even if you manage to sever a limb or rip their gun away from them you may soon find yourself impaled on the end of some unseen weapon stored within various hidden Chambers all alongside their body these can take the form of grotesque sacks of bioacid around the tyranid's neck that cause even the tiniest bite to be lethal fleshy barbs that act like spring-loaded Impaler weapons that can launch from their mouth and deliver close range Precision strikes to their enemies vital organs or even to the horror of many Guardsmen acid-like blood that turns their foes short-lived Victory into a erosive bubbling nightmare if we think of their adaptations Weaponry War gear ships and everything in between in terms of advanced technology what the hive mind is capable of creating puts even the most esteemed and ingenious minds of the other species to shame they are able to create monstrously effective instruments of war out of nothing more than organic slurry and this organic technology or I guess more accurately intelligently designed evolution is capable of advancing at inconceivable rates vastly outperforming and outmaneuvering even the most concentrated efforts of the Galaxy's best worst Miss and speaking of that technology let's talk about the most fun part of any one of these big faction deep Dives and that's some of their Weaponry although the Devourer may look sort of silly what with its large cone-shaped barrel the reality of this gun is that it's more akin to a weaponized Hive of insects the barrel is quite literally a hunk of rotting organic matter that houses a thriving colony of warming parasitic fleshworms when the weapon is fired a bioelectrical shock is generated inside of the wielder and then pulls through the weapon's cone causing the worms to be kicked up into a Feeding Frenzy after they're primed and properly pissed off the worms are propelled out of the gun in a shower at their target now after making contact they will begin to rip and tear into organic flesh or frantically try to find a weak point in the enemy's armor such as a joint seal they will then burrow inside of the victim and rapidly tunnel their way towards the brain where they will then begin to devour it from the inside out the larger variation of this gun wielded by bigger tyranids is home to an even more voracious species of worm known as brain leech worms they not only tunnel with more efficiency but each worm is also armored and filled with corrosive fluid meaning armor targets under sustained fire from these things will have their armor gradually reduced to nothing as the detonating worms spread acid everywhere and their lethally sharp bodies gouge holes that subsequent worms can successfully use to infiltrate the target's body similarly the Barb Strangler works by firing a fist-sized seed pod that grows to maturity in a fraction of a second as it travels it will transform into a flailing mass of razor-sharp tendrils that spread out in all directions seemingly instantaneously when they make contact they will rapidly entangle their target the appendages intelligently seeking out the victim's Eyes Nose and Throat as well as twisting around their arms and legs before in a sudden violent spasm ripping them apart in an explosion of Gore larger variations of this weapon known as stranglethorn cannons fire even larger seed pods with much more corded muscle these things are capable of wrapping around an entire vehicle and when they contract will tear their heavily armored prey apart in a wrenching explosion stepping away from living ammunition for a moment the Venom cannons are something a bit more familiar instead of bullets they fire crystallized shards of acid that are launched at ridiculously high speeds the larger variants of which being capable of firing projectiles at Hypersonic velocities making them into something of an organic rail Cannon their ammunition is effective at taking out heavily armored targets or vehicles with the initial shot and groups of infantry are shredded by the resulting toxic shrapnel Impaler cannons are another strange tyranid weapon that exists as a collection of parasitic Shard beasts attached to the base of long harpoon-like projectiles the size of an average human adult these creatures feed on the internal fluids of the Harpoon until the moment the weapon is fired at which point the creature's innards are torn out as it launches into the sky with its last few remaining minutes of Life the creature will instinctively guide and direct the spear towards the intended target it's like a smart artillery gun with projectiles that can adjust their course mid-flight so now that we know a bit more about their weapons and War gear let's talk about some of the different units that make up the tyranid fighting forces now the most numerous of these units that make up the bulk of the Swarm are gaunts and rippers a gaunts which come in two primary variants the hormigant and their ranged equivalent the termagons with perhaps the exception of Spore mines and rippers the gaunts are the simplest tyranid life forms and are generated by the high fleets in their billions these creatures often make up the bulk of the first wave during a tyranid Invasion and will hurl themselves at the enemy in undisciplined swarms like an avalanche of teeth Claws and bioweapon fire rippers on the other hand are also released in exceptionally large numbers and are one of several different species of feeder beasts the role of a feeder Beast is basically to begin the digestion process early ravenously eating any organic components that they come across during The Invasion that will later be absorbed by the high Fleet they are like a thrumming mat of needle teeth maggots armored serpents that although one-on-one are no match for an adult both human when in full swarm mode can devour creatures dozens of times their size like a pack of frenzied piranhas further up the tyranid hierarchy we have what are known as synapse creatures and you can think of these guys as the generals and commanders of the tyranid forces they have this innate connection to the hive mind and it's through them that it exerts its will over the tyranid Fighting Force the most powerful and important of the synapse creatures is what is known as a norn queen The Brood mothers and supreme leaders of a high Fleet they are each around the size of a battle Titan and are fused to the heart of their ship the Queens are so important that they never take to the battlefield themselves and whatever ship they exist on is often buried deep within the heart of the fleet and fiercely protected by the Swarm now I'll admit that because the lore of the norn Queens is something that Games Workshop hasn't really touched on too much in the past two decades we don't really know too much about them my understanding is that they're not literally birthing all of the tyranids them valves but basically they're the Weavers and manipulators of DNA it is the norn queens that dictate what form all of the tyranid should take what kind of weapons should be grafted to them and if they need to quickly change their evolutionary path it is the norn queen that makes that decision if the unthinkable was to happen and a norn queen was to ever be killed it releases a massive psychic disturbance equivalent to a Gamma 12 event strong enough to blunt out the astronomicon temporarily it's been demonstrated that the tyranids in the immediate vicinity of the dying queen go into systematic shock as their forms are overloaded with conflicting evolutionary signals they mutate and transform incredibly quickly but with no clear directive and die pretty horribly when the death scream is heard by the rest of the fleet however it is believed to be interpreted as a signal to shatter into multiple smaller tendrils Each of which will then in time grow their own norn Queen and become its own infant High Fleet when it comes to Battlefield synapse and we have things like turvagon Zone tropes maliceptors Warriors and Hive tyrants now tervicons are massive creatures that are basically made out of towering carapace-like Shields that surround an undulating and swollen abdomen these creatures serve as living incubators that are chock full of infant hormagons and are capable of controlling gaunts in particular incredibly well they issue orders to all of the Gods in their vicinity and at a whim they're capable of causing the tiny infants inside of them to rapidly reach maturity which then vomit forth in a tide of chittering reinforcements The Zone throws are psychic potential given form and resemble nothing more than a Giant floating alien brain on a stick everything about their form is tailor-made to make them better psychers sacrificing defensive and offensive capabilities as well as having limited systems of momentum in order to funnel all of that energy into being a stronger psychic conduit not only are they remarkably effective synapse creatures but this is only a fraction of what they're truly capable of as flexing even the tiniest part of their mind can cause reality to Sunder and a barrage of incandescent psychic power to rupture forth to obliterate enemies and projected bolts of searing broiling energy that can melt adamantium plate and disintegrate flesh with ease the maliceceptors on the other hand fulfill a similar role but are much more powerful than the Zone throws they exist as the purest embodiment of the psychic power of the hive mind an eyeless Beast that Lumbers through the enemy ranks crackling Spears of warp energy lashing out in every direction vaporizing everything in their path whereas the zone thropes are basically defenseless if their psychic abilities are deactivated the maliceceptor is a close combat monster that utilizes powerful colossal Talons that Scythe through the enemy hurling bloody bodies aside as enemy bolt rounds plink harmlessly off of their thickly armored hide tyranid Warriors are the most common and adaptable of all the synaptic creatures they stand twice the height of a normal man and are armored and thick tightness plates they're incredibly quick and have a reaction time that's as fast as the crack of a whip they act as a synaptic linchpin in the hive Minds network of control the Warriors acting as amplification nodes that extend the range of orders issued by stronger synapse creatures and speaking of which The Hive Tyrant is probably the most iconic out of all of the synapse creatures they're the closest equivalent within the Swarm to the role of Commander or general utilized by other factions each and every one a fearsome hulking monster that Towers over the enemy forces they are brutally strong and able to shatter human fortifications and heavily armored war machines with frightening ease they're deadly at every distance some being equipped with powerful variants of tyranid firearms While others fulfill more close range combat roles wielding lethally sharp bone swords or frightening whips that can tear apart enemy infantry in the blink of an eye okay so let's talk about the tyranid Vanguard units which include species like lichters leapers and jeans dealers and although they are an effective and efficient part of the larger tyranid fighting force the title of Vanguard unit actually comes from the fact that their primary role is to be sent out ahead of the high fleets before an invasion has begun proper their number one priority to infiltrate worlds deemed well suited for consumption and prepare them for harvesting the gene Stealers do this by Going Underground infecting local populations and then creating vast Cults that after gestating and growing underground for decades or even centuries will eventually rise up causing their society to collapse into Anarchy softening them up before the high Fleet arrives whereas entities like the lichters will sow chaos by remaining undetected for similar lengths of time studying the population and learning everything about their prey society and hierarchical systems they will then use this knowledge to eliminate key individuals such as esteemed leader figures to cause Mass political turmoil or in some cases their victims may seem incredibly random preying on ordinary citizens in order to spread fear and anxiety as mutilated bodies turn up in the streets and missing posters plaster every surface within a human settlement it's kind of remarkable to think that a single jeans dealer can cause an entire world to collapse in on itself but even more frighteningly these entities will often be deployed in mass as ravenous swarms of forearm death dealers each and every claw being sharp enough to tear apart ceramide armor with relative ease whereas the lichters and leapers are incredibly skilled assassins that can flank enemy forces and eliminate individuals of strategic importance such as commanders or generals they can also cut off supply lines sabotage enemy fortifications power reserves and artillery and speaking of artillery when it comes to long-range Warfare the tyranids have developed many unique organisms that act as powerful weapons within the hive mine's Arsenal designed to Reign Death From Afar the most common variant of these artillery beasts is the biovore a squat and Bloated creature that launches clutches of Spore mines across the battlefield the living bombs that blanket the enemy in acids poison and shrapnel-sized pieces of chitin the Spore mines themselves possess a limited intelligence that allows those that miss their target to propel themselves around the battlefield on a series of gas splatters until they come into contact with enemy forces detonating in a violent explosion the exocrine however is a much larger Living Weapons platform rightfully feared for its destructive capabilities they basically exist as a giant bio cannon with legs every shot unleashing searing beams of plasma that are powerful enough to eat through even a heavily armored tanks Hull superheating the interior and incinerating the crew and causing Munitions to ignite in a horrendous Fireball that tears the vehicle apart tyranid monster units come in a variety of different shape sizes and functions and many of them have been specifically designed to excel at burrowing beneath the ground at these creatures like mallocs trigons and their smaller cousins the raveners are deployed when the tyranid force is not able to gain any ground against heavily dug in enemies or those sheltered in seemingly impenetrable fortifications while the enemy is busy fighting the Swarm on the front lines these burrowing units move into position underneath the fortification and erupt upwards causing chaos to immediately ensue inside of the Fortress giving the Frontline forces the opportunity to Surge forward and overwhelm the enemy and even more tyranids a safe path into the enemy's territory by utilizing the tunnels they leave behind carnifexes are probably the most adaptable of all of the different tyranid species some of them have shown such unique adaptations that many have earned their own classification by Imperial Scholars sporting unique names like screamer Killers or Razorbacks no matter what form they take all carnifexes are towering organic engines of Destruction that are completely unyielding in their Advance some act as living battering rams and Sport monstrous amounts of armor plating and knotted alien muscular they're capable of knocking over tanks with a single swipe of their crushing claws pulverizing enemy war machines with their mace-like tails or eviscerating hordes of infantry with their massive scything talents other times they may take on the role of a ranged unit wielding an array of deadly bioweapons regardless if they fight up close or from afar or take a more hybrid approach the carnifexes are some of the toughest and deadliest tyranny creatures ever documented serving as the swarm's primary spearhead unit due to their impressive amount of armor plating and in some instances regenerative abilities however the largest ground-based tyranid unit documented so far has been the massive terrifying hierophant biotitans they are absolutely immense titan-sized creatures that Tower over the battlefield they're each armed with enormous bio cannons that are capable of unleashing a hail of Highly venomous and corrosive maggot-like organisms that explode on impact in a release of Bio acid and poison that is strong enough to melt through any material it comes into contact with reducing entire fleets of enemy tanks and war machines to bubbling steaming slag and ranks of infantry into pools of hissing goo I should make a quick note here that there are actually a lot of different types of biotitans and most of them having kind of been pushed into the realm of obscurity as they existed in old outdated books and game systems that are no longer supported by Games Workshop my personal favorite of which being the dominatrix That was supposed to be like an avatar of the norn queen herself with which she could participate in the battle but weather Games Workshop still considers these big beasties Canon is kind of Up For Debate especially since with the next wave of tyranid releases that's about to come out one of them is called the norn Emissary and I kind of have a sneaking suspicion that this thing is going to take over the role that the dominatrix used to play now as large as the bio Titans are they are technically absolutely tiny in comparison to the largest tyranid organisms which are their ship tips themselves although all tyranids are connected to the hive mind the connection of synapse creatures being far stronger than those of the more animalistic variety The Hive ships the largest of the tyranid ships are said to have such a profound connection to the hive mind's will that the portion of the psychic disturbance known as The Shadow and the warp that they generate creates a distorted perimeter around the entirety of their Fleet causing warp space to become distorted for multiple light years in every direction this causes warp travel in the vicinity of Eternity Fleet to become incredibly unpredictable and extremely dangerous and not to mention the fact that Astro telepathic communication is rendered almost completely useless there were countless Tales of astropaths who in the presence of the high Fleet have gone completely irredeemably mad and entire squadrons have been crippled Beyond repair before even committing to battle as they're thrashed about in the dangerous turbulent warp Tides this causes a high fleet's advance to bring with it confusion and Terror that eclipses entire worlds like a suffocating Shadow a grim Omen of the planet's approaching Doom although the form that tyranids can take is seemingly only limited by the infinite imagination and capacity for cruelty displayed by the hive mind Imperial scientists have managed to categorize their ships into several different distinct species The Hive ships themselves are absolutely Titanic in scale some being documented being between 20 and 30 kilometers in length you can think of them like a living Mothership that's part organic creature part worship and most importantly part bio Factory within the innards of each of the hive ships endless swarms of tyranids or bread hatched and deployed to the planet's surface a typical tyranid Fleet will have multiple massive Hive ships though some believe that even still one of them will act as the dominant life form through which the hive mind operates and issues its commands because of how important they are they're often The Last Ship to arrive during an invasion and are believed to play a prominent role in how the Swarm is capable of not just Ren entering all life on a planet into biomass but additionally consuming its atmosphere and oceans literally eating and then sucking them up from orbit in the final stage of the world's consumption although it's not directly confirmed it's believed that the smaller ships within a high Fleet that fulfill roles similar to Cruisers used by other species may in fact be simply infant Hive ships that have not fully reached maturity yet even if this is true they are each incredibly dangerous even in their infant form Krakens are one such example named after the high Fleet that they were first documented being used by they act as escorts for the hive ships and are about equivalent in size and function to frigates of the Imperial Navy they're deployed in enormous swarms and are capable of being rapidly constructed in birthed by The Hive ships if the Swarm faces considerable resistance from void-based enemy vessels however they are not capable of surviving PlanetSide and thus only exist in the void but are known for viciously attacking other vessels that would pose a threat to the hive ships Krakens come in a lot of different forms each hyper specialized for specific roles they can take on a form more suitable for Close Quarters combat using Weaponry like massive crushing claws or feeder tentacles or even adapt to long-range void Warfare utilizing arrays of pyro acid batteries or biotorpedoes there's actually one particularly terrifying variant of the Kraken that utilizes what is known as a ram smitter these things will charge enemy ships latch onto them and then impale them with a hook like proboscis that easily penetrates the ship's armor like a massive mosquito the ram smitter will then violently suck up all digestible material while simultaneously vomiting forth a brood of Gene Steelers and hormagaunts that will swarm into the enemy vessel and eliminate the crew although Krakens are most commonly observed defending their hive ships they are also known to roam a considerable distance from the fleet acting as lone predators that Venture forth into the void and Prey Upon shipping lanes as is the case with pretty much every tyranid ship they don't pose any threat to a planet directly as a planet's gravitational force would most likely crush them if they got too close but they have been known to render entire systems indefensible as their voracious appetites for transports space stations sealed environments and other outposts Knows No Limit Vanguard drones are another type of ship that work in a similar manner as they tend to range far ahead of the main Fleet their primary purpose being to seek out suitable worlds for the hive ships to Feast upon these ships often carry a host of tyranid infiltrator organisms like Gene Steelers lickers and leapers who will Deploy on the planets and prepare them for harvesting the Vanguard ship will then return to the fleet to inform them of the location of new prey the threat that these Scouts represent to a planet cannot be underestimated and if one is ever located its destruction becomes the top priority of a planetary system some other ships include escort drones which are often considered to be the last line of defense for a hive ship and normally flanking them in vast swarms and there there's also the narvels which I'll admit I only found out about recently when I decided to go down the tyranid rabbit hole to figure out how they managed to move back and forth across the Galaxy you see the tyranids are not capable of utilizing warp travel and most people believe that this means that they cannot travel faster than the speed of light however this is in fact not the case as the narvels make this possible you see these things don't have any weapons or armor and pretty much only exist for this one particular task they are instead equipped with a wide range of specialized nerve clusters that allow them to interpret an enormous amount of sensory and gravimetric signals even out in the void of space they can detect planetary systems from dozens hundreds or perhaps even thousands of light years away although we don't have any specifics on how such a thing is possible the narvels are seemingly able to harness the system's gravity in order to create a corridor of compressed space through which the tyranid fleet can swiftly travel this has two major effects at first is that it isn't a perfect means of transportation High fleets cannot travel directly to a planet as the gravitational force could do irreparable damage to the narwhal's delicate senses and on Final Approach the fleet will have to drop back into real space and utilize traditional propulsion methods to make the final leg of the journey this last stretch can take decades or even centuries while the gravitational Lane is open however the narval's manipulation of A System's gravity will cause absolute Chaos on a planet's surface we're talking tidal waves earthquakes volcanic eruptions hurricanes insane weather patterns the whole shebang this can do irreparable damage not just to the planet itself but all those living upon it as societies collapse into Anarchy all while they're completely unaware of what is actually happening from these humans perspective it's as if they're living through the end times and I just kind of want to imagine that for a moment you're living on your planet going about your day-to-day life and all of a sudden all hell break loose and its constant natural disaster for decades and then it all of a sudden stops you and the survivors are left to put the pieces back together it's going to take a lot of hard work and obviously everyone is super sad that everything's been destroyed but damn it you survived you made it through the apocalypse only for like 10 years later you look up in the sky and there's an entire High Fleet that's about to eat all of you and everyone's like Jesus Christ I'll be honest it's like one of the most metal things I've read about in 40K in a really long time this Grim Dark Universe never ceases to amaze me when we talk about what a tyranid Invasion looks like it's important to remember that there's lots of different variables with this as the tyranids are in infinitely complex organism that utilizes tons of different strategies and tactics with which they go about the consumption of entire worlds sometimes a planet will be incredibly well defended and thus Vanguard organisms will generate a gene Steeler cult under the planet's surface for decades or even centuries before their numbers swell to a Breaking Point and an uprising occurs plunging the world into Anarchy and disabling its defensive systems thus making it easy prey for the approaching High Fleet sometimes they'll show up to a planet that although rich in life and resources is not currently held by an intelligent species and thus they don't really have to take any defensive measures in order to go about harvesting it but in order to get a better understanding of what this process looks like in this section we're going to take a look at a much more typical Invasion structure so you know the signs to look for when you're reading a 40K novel or you know just keeping an eye out for weird things in the real world phase one Invasion as we mentioned before when talking about the different tyranid ships millions of Vanguard drones are sent out in every direction for hundreds of light years from the high Fleet to scout out and find worlds suitable for consumption investigating every star system they come across for signs of life when one is found they will deploy Vanguard organisms such as lichters leapers and Gene Steelers and other such infiltrator units via my attic spores which you can think of like a tyranid equivalent to a Space Marine drop pod except it's all fleshy and gross the Vanguard organisms are hyper-intelligent as they need to be able to exist on their own undetected for sometimes centuries at a time because they're so independent and are given a particular degree of Freedom uncommon to most tyranid units sometimes they don't need to use a Vanguard ship at all often times stowing away on vessels of other species that they know will be moving back and forth across shipping lanes regardless of how they got there the infiltrator organisms now have to gather information and they do this in a couple of different ways ways a creatures like the lichter will use its chameleonic abilities to hide in plain sight and study local populations and ecosystems sometimes even snatching individuals off the street consuming their brain and thus learning all of their secrets they have a never-ending thirst for knowledge and will spend decades learning everything there is to know about the enemy a gene Steelers on the other hand will infiltrate highly populated areas and create a nest of sorts in a hidden location oftentimes deep in an underhive or within a sewer system from there they will begin to snatch people off the street in the dead of night dragging them back to their Lair and then give them what is known as the gene Steelers kiss where they infect them with microorganisms that do two things they manipulate the target's DNA introducing tyranid DNA into their system while simultaneously brainwashing the individual to see the gene stealer as not some grotesque monster but as a kind of Savior figure a beautiful holy man or woman that must be followed and protect they do this for many years growing their flock larger and larger over time as the generations proceed and individuals within this newly established Gene Steeler cult give birth to new members The Offspring will begin to mutate as they receive DNA from both their parents and the gene stealer patriarch that infected them the first several Generations will be hideously malformed looking more like a bipedal tyranid than a human but as more and more Generations are produced they begin to look more and more human until the only thing that stands out about them is the fact that they're all completely hairless these individuals will be able to move about Society undetected thus spreading the patriarch's influence while also aiming to bring in Evermore members into the cult they will often move into positions of authority gaining control over vast swaths of resources in which to prepare the world for the high fleet's arrival which through their brainwashing believe that these entities are their saviors angels and gods deities that will come from the stars to bring Salvation to the faith now whether the Vanguard organisms being used are Gene Steelers and their cultists or solitary Predators like a lichter or more commonly a combination of different infiltrator organisms at a certain point they will seek to spread confusion and panic amongst the population for example once a lichter knows everything there is to know about the political situation on any given World they can assassinate key figureheads at particular moments and make it look like it was a rival nation that did the deed strategic assassination like this can cause entire planets to be engulfed in brutal Civil War as the liquor stands in the shadows constantly pulling on the strings of Discord at this point the high Fleet is able to detect different tyranid organisms light years away but the signal is incredibly faint as the gene Steeler cult gets larger and larger and thus more individuals are infected with tyranid DNA the psychic signal continues to grow more powerful until eventually it indicates a suitable feeding ground for the hive Fleet this process can take centuries or even Millennia as the High Fleet is a patient Predator the second part of this phase comes in when the high Fleet begins to make its way towards the unsuspecting system utilizing the narvels the gravitational induced Chaos on the planet's surface will cause natural disasters to be commonplace additionally as the high Fleet approaches the first true indicator of the planet's inevitable Doom will come when it is engulfed in the shadow of the warp to exist within this negative field is to experience overwhelming panic and anxiety at all times which will only exacerbate all of the negative emotions and infighting within the populace while simultaneously rendering astropathic communication impossible so even at this point if the planet did suspect something was coming they wouldn't be able to call for help phase 2 subjugation once the high fleet has made its journey across the stars and arrives above the unsuspecting World phase two of the invasion begins in this phase The Hive ships will unleash a barrage of trillions of spores the first wave carrying a terrifying payload full of symbiotes and parasites microscopic organisms that Target the planet's native Flora causing plant life to mutate at a rapid rate into horrifying alien forms the forest that covered a planet's surface before The Invasion began or quickly replaced with all manner of hyper-evolved and highly aggressive alien vegetation these include the spying light capillary towers that burst from the planet's surface and stretch upwards for miles into the planet's upper atmosphere whereas the original native plant life which provided the essential function of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen is replaced with tyranid plants that Aid in the transformation of the planet's atmosphere into something hostile and deadly the sky darkens a sickly shade of red and the temperature rapidly begins to rise the atmosphere in turn being transformed into a hot house indicative of the world's imminent Doom more spores Begin to Fall some containing viciously viral payloads of poisonous organisms that choke the atmosphere and kill Millions before even a single shot fired in defense whereas other spores explode on impact taking out planetary defense systems and command posts showering population centers and torrents of acidic digestive bile still more spores fall carrying with them trillions of warrior organisms thus beginning the tyranid ground assault once the ground forces have swelled in number and have created vast kill zones the next unit to be deployed are the flying organisms these include the massive heritans and swarms of gargoyle so numerous they blot out the sun their purpose is twofold first to immediately engage in overwhelmed defensive weapons and shields the Swarms of gargoyles have been documented bombarding enemy void Shields with their own bodies millions of them hurtling themselves into the shields in quick succession to overwhelm them and quickly cause them to fail well simultaneously dive bombing into the massive gun barrels of planetary artillery that is capable of harming the ships in orbit sacrificing themselves in the hundreds of thousands to clog the gun barrels up jamming up all their components with their pulverized Bodies In addition to taking out these key structures the aerial formations will surround and kite groups of enemy infantry in the direction of the kill zones established by the ground forces quickly eliminating them in pincer attacks the Colts that have been established preemptively by the Vanguard organisms will at this point take up arms against the planet's native population all of the isolated pockets of resistance that for a moment seem to have found themselves in a defensible position are suddenly engulfed in infighting as guns within their own ranks are turned against them at this point the original infiltrator organisms have additionally relinked psychically with the hive mind relaying to them all of the information that they have gathered over the previous centuries in an instant every single tyranid creature on the planet knows everything there is to know about this world all of its strategies location of Key Resources political structures and anything that the people of this world believe may be used useful to fighting off the Invaders the high Fleet knows more about them in a moment than all of the people living here know about themselves and thus the mere notion of trying to come up with a new strategy is ultimately futile at this point swarms of Rippers and gaunts in their millions are overwhelming all of the planet's defenses under sheer weight of numbers and while they are preoccupied the high Fleet deploys in the big guns massive spores descend to the planet's surface bringing with them powerful Warrior units carnifexes high of tyrants and even the massive biotitans as powerful as all of these creatures are the most powerful weapon the tyranid fleet utilizes during this stage is fear even if they don't know anything about the tyranids the site of the invasion in full force is enough to spread panic and Chaos across the entirety of the world but if the population has encountered tyranids before then it's way worse for they know that there is no hope that this planet will be completely devoured there death and the death of everyone they know will be soon to follow but what's even worse than that is that they understand that after they're consumed by the Invaders their genetic material will be used as fuel to bring about the continued destruction of their species on worlds light years away in the future phase 3 consumption from the perspective of somebody who is on a world being attacked by the tyranids the invasion in and of itself is a true Cosmic horror given form but even that pales in comparison to what comes next as after the last pockets of resistance are finally neutralized the most horrifying part of the attack Begins the consumption phase at this point the acidic Spore mines that have been detonating across the planet's surface have created vast reservoirs of digestive bile referred to as digestion pools after these lakes and oceans of acidic gastric fluids reach sufficient enough volumes feeder organisms that have been pupating in the carcasses of the Native life reach maturity and burst forth from their carcasses these ravenous creatures will spread out in every direction and relentlessly begin to feed on the living and the dead devouring everything in sight they don't really have the ability to digest anything on their own so instead what they do is wait until they are fat and Bloated absolutely chock full of organic material that they've eaten and then drag the their way towards the digestion pools throwing themselves into the steaming bubbling icker their own bodies along with everything that they have ingested will be obliterated and rendered into thick nutrient-rich gruel collectively known as biomass as thousands upon thousands of these bloated tick-like creatures continue to throw themselves into the pools more capillary Towers will emerge from the depths pushing High into the atmosphere and linking up with riding sucking proboscai feeding tubes that descend from The Hive ships the towers pulse and undulate as the rendered organic slurry is pumped upwards into the swarm of hungry ships above up until this point the symbiotic link between all tyranid organisms caused them to recognize friend from foe when it came to the possessed cultists that were aiding in The Invasion it's at this moment of the invasion that a couple of different things can happen in some instances the mind control link is suddenly severed and the cult realizes with sudden Dawning horror just what they have done and they're staring into the face of a horde of ravenous monsters in such circumstances they will quickly be devoured or be dragged Kicking and Screaming into the digestion pools however is sometimes in a perhaps rare form of alien Mercy the link is never severed and they March blank face to their death one final baptism for the faithful and still in other documented cases the cultists are never actually consumed they are instructed to secure and ban any void capable vessels that were not destroyed in the fighting to spread out to other systems spreading the high fleet's influence to new unsuspecting worlds one lucky cultist perhaps giving birth to a new patriarch who will begin the process Anew or at the very least prepare a hidden location for incoming Vanguard organisms the feeding process will continue on like this until although the planet's organic components are Stripped Away including all of the tyranid-induced plant life and bacteria this is done through the efforts of the Limitless swarms of Rippers and the tyrannical bacterial agents once all of the tyranid ground forces are no longer needed they will all throw themselves into the digestion pools be rendered down into biomass and be reabsorbed by The Hive ships to be remade in another invasion in the future the final stage of this process is the consumption of the world's atmosphere and seas specially adapted drone ships that can survive inside of the planet's gravitational field will descend and Gorge themselves on any useful elements they can find making multiple trips back and forth bringing water to the suckling Hive ships when it's all said and done and the planet has been completely stripped Barren at a molecular level the high Fleet will return to the void and begin the process again their only driving motivation to feed survive and multiply they will continue this process endlessly until the entire galaxy is left withered and dried whereupon it will ultimately leave setting its sights upon the next feeding ground Untold billions of light years away there exists a bit of Fusion in the 40K Community as to how much the tyranids take from a planet and I'll admit this is something that I wasn't also 100 clear on that was until I read belisarius calls novel The Great work there's a scene in the book where he visits the planet of sotha that had been entirely consumed by the tyranids they make it clear that from orbit the planet appeared entirely dead but when they go down to the planet's surface call points out to the Space Marines in his company that hiding within the rock formations deep under the planet's surface were trapped pockets of water as well as teeming swarms of microbes that continued to exist thus he summarizes that the tyranids are only surface level feeders the planet's oceans and atmosphere are gone but call believes this is something that's fixable as the system still has their son he says that by introducing water and gases taken from other planets within the system and reintroducing Flora and Fauna cloned from Vault samples held in a library on mccrag then by his estimations he he could have a hydrological cycle up and running within 50 years a rudimentary ecosystem within a century and something approaching full life could potentially be restored to this corpse of a planet within 350 years it give or take a century which considering the fact that belisarius call is almost 10 000 years old from his perspective this is basically no time at all however as is the case with many of Carl's views this is at odds with the imperium's policy that dictates that all worlds consumed by the tyranids must be abandoned so whether or not they're ever going to end up terraforming worlds that the tyranids have eaten is something that remains to be seen But the notion that this is something that the Imperium is capable of does in fact exist now that we know a bit more about what the tyranids are and what they do let's talk a bit about their history the first documented encounter between the Imperium and the tyranids was on the world of Tyron Primus in the year 745 of the 41st Millennium now if you're a person like me that sometimes struggles with dates in this universe that would mean that for as much of a galaxy ending threat as the tyranids are they only showed up a little under 400 years ago and they would completely consume the unsuspecting Planet so fun fact they were named after the first Imperial world that they ate however this would not be the first time that anyone had encountered the tyranids as fans of Dan abinet's Inquisitor series will remember that Inquisitor ravenor had a brief encounter with the tyranids after stepping through a particularly spooky door although at this point in time the Imperium didn't have a name for these terrifying creatures and him and his retinue barely survived the encounter Additionally the Eldar have documented accounts with the tyranids as far back as the 35th Millennium where in a massive continent-sized organic structure was encountered in the Tiamat system on the jungle world of xiphoria Additionally the gene Steelers that were discovered on the moon of imgurl were determined to be a Vanguard tyranid organism whereas before they were thought to be just a unique one-off alien species there are also accounts from the Helicon sector as far back as M36 of nightmarish winged Horrors that are described in such a way that makes them sound suspiciously similar to tyranid gargoyles whatever the case High Fleet behemoths attack on Tyron is when the Imperium first began to take the tyranid threat seriously we know that the tyrants came from outside of our galaxy but what drew them here in the first place well there have been a lot of different theories as some believe that the light of the astronomicon drew them in like moss to a flame some believe and possibly that The Great Devourer was running from something even bigger and even still some people believe that they have always existed in our galaxy pointing to suspicious hierogly lives on necron Tomb structures that vaguely resemble lowly tyranid organisms however in the 2015 novel pharaohs by Guy Haley we would get a more definitive answer in the book there's an ancient piece of xenos technology known as the Pharaohs device and by the end it ends up getting overloaded in the Battle of sotha after this happened the resulting blinding flash drew the attention of something great and hungry I want to share with you a quick passage from the epilogue of this story and don't worry there's no spoilers it really doesn't have anything to do with the novel itself but it's super relevant to this discussion far beyond the fringes of the Galaxy there was not but endless black past the few stray Stars plying their lonely track through the cold night past the dead worlds and the fragments of Galactic collisions billions of years gone past the probes sent out by extinct races recorded in no history past all that and Beyond there was a night sea studded with the diamond islands of dis instant lonely galaxies though incomprehensibly vast this sea was not empty great behemoths of the deep lurked there into the Eternal Blackness a flash of quantum energy shown out at many times the speed of light a brief flare milliseconds in duration projecting from an unremarkable spiral of stars it was not missed in the darkness something of Limitless hunger stirred and a slumber that had lasted eons a million Frozen and unblinking eyes saw the flash tipping Cascades of stimuli their purpose served the eyes died The Entity processed the message the eyes provided without ever truly Awakening automatically instinctively its gargantuan dreaming mind analyzed the signal comparing it against all parameters for the one thing it sought pray slowly glacially The Great Devourer shifted its course although all of the different tyranid High fleets are technically part of the same species and thus with the tyranids the same organism Imperial Scholars dictate different factions of tyranids based on their different High fleets the first of which to be documented by the Imperium was high Fleet Behemoth after it destroyed the world of Tyran and kicked off the first tyrannic war although originally thought to have been defeated even the entire might of the ultramarines chapter could not fully destroy Behemoth despite their seeming victory over them at mccrag and the 745th year of the 41st Millennium the remaining tendrils of Behemoth scattered to the winds continuing to Prey Upon and consume countless worlds in their desire to satisfy their never-ending burning hunger the characteristic behavior of this High fleet was its use of overwhelming strength and brutal ferocity attacking with a characteristic bluntness that lacks the coordinated sophistication of other high fleets Behemoth draws together its strength and lunges forward after its prey often employing the strongest and largest Warrior forms at its disposal and favoring the tactics of a crushing Stampede of massive tyranid monsters rather than focusing on Limitless swarms or psychic domination around 250 Years After High Fleet Behemoth seeming defeat a new even more dangerous High Fleet would emerge and kick off the second tyrannic war High Fleet Kraken had learned from its predecessor's previous mistakes and would descend upon our galaxy once again attacking from the galactic East Kraken employs entirely different tactics to the unsophisticated pummeling of Behemoth rather than focusing on barreling forward in a headlong charge in One Direction the Kraken instead sought to spread chaos by diluting its forces spreading out over a great distance and attacking in multiple locations simultaneously forcing unprepared Defenders to evacuate or abandon worlds to the Beast as its defenses grew thin I can't put into words just how much chaos this caused as thousands of Worlds erupted into Anarchy and confusion and it's important to remember that the spreading out of all of the tyranid ships had the secondary effect of spreading the shadow in the warp over a much larger area most of the Imperial forces that could come and offer Aid had no idea what was going on as astral communication was completely cut off vast networks of com channels reporting back nothing but Eerie silence as hundreds of Worlds burned in unison the way high flee Kraken tends to attack is by spreading out its tendrils to attack from multiple sides out flanking and trapping their prey or in some cases they like to faint drawing in at planet's Defenders so a new tendril might swoop in to Devour the now undefended World they seem to mostly be drawn to Worlds upset by Gene Steeler called uprisings preying upon the confusion and instability to strike at a weakened enemy they use more lictors and Gene Stealers than any other high Fleet and they like to weaken their prey before engaging head-on the high Fleet will Harry and probe the enemy until a weakness is found and exploited with lethal Precision although it took efforts from not just the Imperium and the ultramarines but also armed forces from the Tao and eldari crack and would eventually seemingly be defeated thus ending the second tyrannic war while Behemoth and Kraken previously made incursions into the Galaxy from the Eastern Fringe High Fleet Leviathan would emerge in 997 m41 attacking from the galactic South and at this point most of the Defenders had moved into the Eastern Fringe in preparation for a future tyranid Invasion no one was prepared for them to come from a completely different direction and because of this spreading thin of defenses several different sectors were all threatened simultaneously and Leviathan was able to move through them with very little resistance Ultima tempestus and even solar home to Holy Terra being some such examples Leviathan is not named as such lightly as it is the largest and most fearsome High Fleet ever recorded and much like heifle Kraken the tendrils of this Fleet spread wide across the Galaxy thus demonstrating that it is utilizing its predecessor's strategy to Ultimate effect by spreading the shadow of the warp as far as possible but on a simply much larger scale it has a much more developed synaptic Network than previous tyranid incursions thus allowing for greater coordination between all of its organisms granting precisely timed assaults across multiple fronts of combat the overlapping shadowy tendrils of Leviathan serve to cut off vast swaths of space from any psychic communication and the Swarms of bioorganisms spawned within the hive ships of Leviathan are specifically designed to take full advantage of this vast Broods of Zone tropes and towering maliceptor organisms ensure that the nullifying aura of the high Fleet stretches as far into Enemy Lines as possible leaving the prey isolated and terrified as was the case with its predecessors Leviathan would eventually seemingly be defeated the final battle taking part on the blood Angel's Homeworld of ball the high Fleet met overwhelming resistance and even an unlikely combination of forces when the resulting Bloodshed caused the forces of chaos to be drawn to ball like moss to the flame an entire contingency of corned demons ripping their way into the physical Universe to take part in the Glorious battle as of the time of this recording the fourth tyrannic War has begun in Earnest High Fleet Leviathan once again pressing the attack although at this point it's still a developing storyline I'll make separate videos covering its events after I've had more time to read all of the new lore as I don't really want to comment on something that I don't fully know enough about yet although Behemoth Kraken and Leviathan are the three most prominent High fleets there are many more that are each uniquely deadly in their own right these smaller High fleets May simply have not been large enough to initiate their own tyrannic war on their own or they may have begun life simply as a splinter of a larger high Fleet that evolved in a new particular direction with its own unique tactical advantages the first of these smaller High fleets I want to talk about is jormungander the Great Serpent a high Fleet famous for its heavy use of tunneling adaptations they will make use of trenches to advance upon a foe or dig tunnels under enemy strongholds to burst from the ground and overrun The Defenders should this High Fleet end up being repelled those organisms on the ground will Retreat into the tunnels and no matter how well they are purged you can be sure that jormungandra will always rise again making them incredibly difficult to actually get rid of once they make Planet fall High Fleet Hydra likes to practice duplicity and whenever it shows up it appears as a very small tendril of a tyranid Invasion this is a deliberate adaptation to hide its true strength you see every bioform within High Fleet Hydra is capable of replicating and creating Offspring at an incredible rate it's capable of producing so many distinct bioforms that it's able to bury its prey under sheer numbers on several occasions High Fleet Hydra has swept into a sector decimated by another high Fleet and they Feast on the survivors and the Fallen tyranid Fleet alike this cannibalistic behavior is definitely something that is pretty rare for the tyranids most of the time one hifley doesn't really feed on another one and recently the mystery has deepened as it's been observed that high Fleet Hydra will actually just straight up attack other smaller tendrils of older fleets not even practicing their scavenger-like behavior from before just straight up eliminating entire tendrils on their own why they could be doing this Still Remains a mystery but if we look at the tyranid hole as an entire body with all of its organs and cells spread out over vast distances it's almost like high Fleet Hydra acts like a series of antibodies that attacks corrupted cells that it deems inefficient I'm actually really curious to see where they go with the lore of high Fleet Hydra but that might take a little while since Leviathan kind of is in the spotlight right now High Fleet Gorgon on the other hand has this uncanny ability to rapidly evolve a solution to whatever threats are thrown at it in its current iteration Gorgon seems to favor Warfare that uses a lot of spores and necrotic poisons after they ingest just a little bit of Flesh from their intended target and they are able to analyze that DNA all of the spores and poisons produced by Gorgon will be tailor-made to attack the system of anything sharing that genetic makeup as such gorgon's attack patterns tend to favor a heavier than normal concentration of Spore Caster organisms High Fleet Kronos seems to have a taste for demons and Chaos corrupted prey specifically tailoring its bioforms to slay targets from afar with long-range bio cannons in order to deal with these strange warp infused prey creatures that are not native to our universe Chronos has a particularly powerful shadow in the warp to drain psychic energy from its Foe and Empower its own host of psychic creatures under normal circumstances tyranids tend to avoid any areas corrupted by chaos as demons are made out of warp stuff and not biomass so they can't actually absorb them so high Fleet Kronos may exist as an example of accelerated Evolution to deal with the increasing chaos presence within the Galaxy ifley Tiamat is probably the strain changes of all of the different tyranid High fleets and I actually talked about them in a previous video in great detail so if you want to know a little bit more of an in-depth look at that I recommend you check that video out after you finish this one under normal circumstances after a tyranid high Fleet attacks a planet it will strip everything from them and then move on to the next one tmat doesn't seem to work like this they won't strip everything all at once and instead of moving on with the invasion they seem like they want to continue to stick around on these worlds and guard them this is a very peculiar set of tyranid behavior traits as they don't normally seem like they want to actually control any territory Tiamat being the only exception and their bioforms are specially designed to excel in this defensive role as all of their creatures have proven incredibly durable and extremely difficult to kill High Fleet oroboros exists as a nightmare straight out of Legend a shadow from the stars that descends from above on bat-like wings to devour its victims this High Fleet favors aerial assaults of gargoyles and harpies and numbers so great that those unfortunate enough to be below must fight in near Darkness this allows the hive to quickly Target communication posts and Target command structures with lightning speed and this act of removing the prey's figurative eyes and ears has proved incredibly devastating on multiple different worlds throughout the course of this video I have mentioned the hive mind pretty frequently and this is a topic that kind of tends to confuse a lot of people in the Warhammer 40K community so let's get to the bottom of it what exactly is the hive mind the simplest definition of the hive mind is that it is the Gestalt Collective consciousness of every single tyranid organism that exists now oftentimes when we think about the hive mind we think of some giant alien brain-like creature that lurks out in the void of space between galaxies that sends commands to all of the different tyranid High fleets and there may be some truth in this notion an undocumented hyper-intelligent tyranid species like this very well may exist but this isn't really the correct way to think about it every single Tyrant mind is part of the same Consciousness an impossibly vast intellect that stretches impossible distances across time and space the tyranids are often unfortunately depicted as being incredibly dumb just a bunch of creepy animals that are driven by hunger and nothing else entities that act on Instinct alone and although incredibly dangerous are no more intelligent than animals with the exception of a handful of units that are given a larger amount of individual freedom to operate as they see fit but I can't stress enough how dangerously inaccurate this notion is and I would dare say the tyranids are potentially the most intelligent faction in the entirety of the physical Universe containing a god-like collective intelligence that not only is truly impossible for us lowly Mortals to even remotely begin to comprehend but may even rival or surpass the intellect of any of the Gods themselves and I really want to take a minute to really drive that point home because I think it's important and I don't think nearly enough people are talking about this I think it's something that everybody misses when they talk about the tyranids although we often think of them as a bunch of different animals with different specializations it's more accurate to think of the collective of all tyranids as a single body spread out over vast distances of space and time every unique individual tyranid creature is more like a cell in that body that has a unique specialization and role that it fulfills to keep the body healthy all of the high fleets which in and of themselves are collectives of specialized tyranids that perform specific roles act as the body's organs and the hive mind or Collective consciousness of all of the tyranid's body cells and organs is the collective consciousness of every single tyranid thinking in unison the brain of this figurative body and to really get an idea of what that mind is capable of we're going to turn to an unlikely Source a single licker there's a really interesting passage in the devastation of ball where we follow a liquor in the novel's B plot that is attempting to infiltrate the blood Angel's Homeworld and I've talked about this in other videos so I'll keep it short and give you the basic gist of it this creature the lichter the Apex of Evolution the ultimate Hunter is not just a lichter it is the liquor it knows everything that every liquor that came before it knew and from its perspective it is an immortal organism every time a liquor has ever died more of them are produced with the same knowledge personality and evolutionary advantages of its predecessors it remembers every mistake it ever made that got it killed it remembers every organism it ever studied or consumed billions of years of evolution tactical insight and Collective wisdom all condensed into one lethal organism all of that wisdom in turn transmitting into the overall Hive mind's Consciousness whenever the liquor is reabsorbed as biomass by The Hive fleets this single lichter gives us a lot of insight into how intelligent the hive mind actually is because it works in a very similar manner but on a much larger scale it is the collective wisdom and experience gathered by every single tyranid that has ever lived as well as all the wisdom and experiences of all of the creatures they have ever consumed and just really think about that you are a very intelligent creature you have years of collected wisdom you have learned from all of the mistakes you made and are willing to try out new things even if you're not 100 sure of their outcome as regardless if they go good or bad you have an opportunity to grow as an individual by the time each and every one of us dies we are each a beautiful collection of lived experience wisdom and stories but there's only so much a single one of us can learn in a given lifetime what if however it wasn't just you building up all of these experiences and all that wisdom what if it was the collective knowledge of every single human being on our planet what if it was not just the collected wisdom of all living people but every single person that has ever walked this Earth preserved in perfect detail you knew everything and had experienced everything that every single living person on this planet knew or had experienced well our brains were not designed to process such ludicrous amounts of information so our heads would probably explode but if this wasn't to happen and we've somehow were able to contain all of this data our IQ would probably be measured in the thousands what if we went a step further let's scale that out to the galaxy of the grimdark future what if you had all of the collected wisdom of not just every single person that ever lived on our world but every world all the million worlds of the Imperium the collected wisdom and experience of a simply inconceivable amount of people what if we're talking millions of years billions of years and not just Humanity every species that has ever lived not just all of the species within one Galaxy but multiple galaxies that mind that impossibly beautiful and terrifying Consciousness that would be created is nothing less than a god an omniscient all-knowing horrifying Consciousness even a species like the necrons often depicted it as being the most intelligent faction in Warhammer 40K simply based on what they are capable of creating doesn't even hold a candle to the tyranid hive mind it's not even remotely close the necron slumbered for 60 million years gaining nothing and and all that time the tyranids were out there growing smarter and more dangerous and potentially they've been doing this for a lot longer than that this ludicrous shared intelligence allows the entirety of the tyranid species to think calculate and strategize in unison on levels we can't even comprehend on infinite battlefields across the Stars at the exact same time for how terrifyingly powerful the hive mind actually is some may take comfort in the concept that such a god-like creature may look at us with a degree of ambivalence that we are nothing more than a food source biomass to be consumed now honestly when I say it out loud it actually does sound pretty bad that's some pretty scary stuff but the even scarier part is that there are numerous instances where the hive mind has demonstrated not just ambivalence towards humans just looking at us as a food source but on the contrary a fascination with and an infinite capacity for vicious cruelty the tyranids were my first love in Warhammer 40K they were the army that I gravitated towards all the way back in 2002 as a kid hanging out in my local game store playing card games with my friends now it wasn't until one of the older kids passed me some 40K codexes and I started reading about the Grim darkness of the far future for the first time and very quickly realized that me and my friends absolutely had to get into this it was the coolest darkest thing I had ever experienced and I genuinely felt like I was reading something I wasn't supposed to be when I saw a box of the at the time newly released tyranid carnifex it was love at first sight they were giant psychic alien space dinosaurs and I'll tell you that as a kid who grew up playing with Dinosaur toys even to this day I just have this innate Nostalgia for tyranids normally I end these deep Dives with a passage or a quote or something that makes you think something that I hope re-contextualizes what we think we know about a given character or faction some real big juicy thought to chew on long after the video ends but with the tyranids it's different they're simultaneously the most unknowable and complex faction in the Grim darkness of the far future well paradoxically being its most straightforward they are Evolution on steroids the ultimate apex predator an impossibly intelligent entity that has evolved over billions of years a silent Predator that lurks in the dark Shoals of the universe descending upon countless worlds and galaxies and absorbing everything in their path with every other faction in this franchise we can see motivations that even if we disagree with we can at least understand we find something Noble and even the most debased and degenerate bands of chaos Warriors or conversely find something absolutely horrifying in even the most stalwart Defenders of mankind there's none of that with the tyranids there's no understanding them there's no reasoning with them there's no opportunity for diplomatic relationship with them they are apocalypse given form the creatures destined to destroy everything that ever was like a giant Galaxy reset button we may never know the truth about what they are or where they come from and perhaps they were some form of organic super weapon created by a long extinct alien race that came to sorely regret their own creation perhaps they were dislodged from their own home Galaxy by some cataclysmic event long ago that directed them towards ours or maybe their true purpose is something so beyond our comprehension that identifying them as the living incarnation of hunger itself is the closest we can get to understanding them it is said that in the Grim darkness of the far future there is only war and if our galaxy was to stand even a fighting chance against the Swarm all sentient species would have to unite together set aside their differences in Petty squabbling and stand as a united front Orcs Eldar humans Tau and necrons and hell maybe even a few Warriors of chaos all standing together to push back the Swarm it's a long shot but perhaps then Not only would the Swarm be defeated but maybe this single moment would be remembered for generations to come and perhaps it would be the Genesis point for a brighter future one in which the entire galaxy began to work together to create a brighter tomorrow this entire concept is not only so ludicrous it's a waste of time to even contemplate but the idea itself is so repugnant so heretical but even to suggest such blasphemy would end in nothing less than execution and thus it is that humanity and all other sentient species within this galaxy are nothing more than carrion pray waiting to be devoured fighting back against the Swarm is nothing but violently thrashing at the dying of the light desperately trying to cling to existence for but a few more centuries but in the end it is all ultimately hopeless because from the tyranid's perspective in the Grim darkness of the far future there is only food

Channel: WesHammer

Views: 648,863

Keywords: weshammer, tyranids, warhammer, tyranids lore, warhammer lore, warhammer explained, 40k lore, 40k xenos lore, xenos, xenos lore, tyranids explained, hive fleet, battle fleet gothic, warhammer 40k, warhammer 40k lore, warhammer 40000, space marines, astartes, imperium of mankind, god emperor, primarch, warhammer tyranids, space marine 2, space marine 2 lore, space marine 2 story, space marine story, tyranid faction, games workshop, warhammer 10th edition, 40k leviathan

Id: aKifdwbuivE

Length: 82min 14sec (4934 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023