OOC: If any of you want to ask questions of the guest characters like Ashlee or Vior Or'es, feel free! Otherwise, here's an update for Part 1 of the Nids. Lots of dialogue, hence why we're breaking it up.
(Medicus Viola: Howdy. Nice to start things off. As usual, I'm Ashlee, and I'll be here to explain the details.)
...You have a first name? I thought your first name was Viola.
(Ashlee: Y'all thought my first name was a string instrument?)
Why are you using "y'all", does that not mean more than one person?
(Ashlee: I'm speakin' to the readership.)
FROM THE DARKNESS BETWEEN THE STARS THEY FLOW, A TIDE OF LIVING NIGHTMARES. THEIR SHADOW IS THE FUNERAL SHROUD OF CIVILISATIONS. THEIR HUNGER IS THE DEATH OF WORLDS. THEY KNOW NOT HATE, FEAR OR COMPASSION, ONLY THE DESIRE TO HUNT AND TO DEVOUR. THEY ARE THE SWARM. THEY ARE THE TENDRIL AND THE TALON. THEY ARE THE TYRANIDS, AND TO STAND AGAINST THEM IN BATTLE IS TO KILL OR BE CONSUMED.
(Ashlee: VLO (Vocalizing Laughter Openly)! The Nids hunt each other even more than they hunt other stuff, and "living nightmares"? A Nid vermin's pretty cute. You can keep 'em as pets, do all sorts of experiments on 'em! This is so glubbin' over the top, lemme tell ya.)
...I can't believe it is actually in full-capitalization.
Welcome to the tome of ineffable horrors that is Codex: Tyranids. What follows is an account of this most alien and iminical of races, from the Tyranids' nature and ways of war to to tales of bloody encounters with their ravenous swarms, and descriptions of their myriad monstrous bioforms. Read on to learn more of the Hive Mind and its numberless, hungering brood.
(Ashlee: Well, this ain't right. The Nids are pretty cute, and Genestealers often have a lot to say.)
Do the Genestealers not damn planets?
(Ashlee: Sure, but they ain't rude, and the damning planets is less often than you'd think. They're spies, not agents of eternal chaos. They're the most "normal" sophont of the Nids, along with the Hive Tyrants.)
The Tyranids are a seemingly infinite race of extragalactic life forms that exist to hunt, kill, and devour all organic life. Be it the warriors of enemy armies or the biospheres of verdant worlds, all are simply biomass to be consumed by the swarm. This raw material is then used to spawn yet more Tyranid war beasts to invade fresh worlds, and so the cycle continues.
(Ashlee: They ain't an army, just an expandin' biosphere with varyin' levels of shared consciousness. Imperium thinks everything's a gaddamed war.)
Your command of Low Gothic is...improving!
(Ashlee: Thanks.)
Like the questing tendrils of some impossibly vast monster, the Tyranids' hive fleets push deeper into the galaxy with every passing day. For every swarm destroyed by desperate defenders, another three drift into the light of beleagured stars, ready to do battle. The Tyranids cannot be bought off, reasoned with, or put to flight. They can only be fought or fled from.
(Ashlee: Natty, thought experiment.)
Is...Is that what "Ynathe" is in your planet's tongue?
(Ashlee: Didn't I just say I was speakin' Low Gothic? We're all speakin' Low Gothic!)
What about "Natty"?
(Ashlee: So I've got some quirks comin' from Bluebonnet, but it's either the Bluebonnet consanguinity or me talkin' about how to vivisect a Hive Tyrant for proper reverence.)
Please tell me about that.
(Ashlee: Not unless ya ask nicely.)
Please, Miss, please tell me about what vivisecting a Hive Tyrant to revere it is like!
(Ashlee: I thought I told ya to stop callin' me yer servile game names.)
It's a hard habit to get out of with people more mature than me.
(Ashlee: Don't Eldar live some eight-hundred years?)
Well, yes, but your lifespan is shorter, so you're proportionally more mature than I am.
(Ashlee: And what's that supposed to mean?)
You have this chaotic sort of genius energy that I find deeply appealing.
(Ashlee: Well, uh, yer mild stupidity's arousin'.)
I thought you said you were only interested in Tyranids, patriarchs, and women in denim short shorts.
(Ashlee: I just imagined you in denim short shorts.)
I'd rather die.
Amassing a Tyranid army is unlike any other collecting and gaming experience in Warhammer 40,000. It places the biological might of the Hive Fleets at your disposal, from numberless tides of lesser war-beasts and mindless shoals of living bombs, to towering chitinous monsters whose raw might and resilience are the match for the most formidable war engines of the foe. Sky-darkening flocks of winged predators; lumbering artillery-beasts; subterranean horrors; toxin-spewing abominations;cunning synaptic leader-beasts and devastating psychic bioforms - the sheer variety of Tyranid creatures available to a hobbyist is remarkable, and truly offers the opportunity to tailor your swarm to the precise way in which you prefer to hunt your prey.
(Ashlee: Yeah, Nids are cool, huh?)
Moreover, taking command of a Tyranid swarm allows you to take on the role of the Hive Mind. This vast gestalt consciousness is what drives the Tyranids on, and donning its mantle gives you access to an impressive array of tabletop psychic abilities, cunning Stratagems and deadly tactics to help you forge your force into a living weapon of war.
(Ashlee: Yep, this is accurate. Tyranids are pretty fuckin' great.)
I truly expected more "debunking".
(Ashlee: Hey, you ever bunked?)
Tyranid fucker, tyranid fucker, tyranid fucker!
(Ashlee: Yep, and proud. Science demands taking risks)
Not those kinds of risks!
BEYOND THE HUMAN GALAXY, BEYOND THE RANGE OF MAN-MADE SPACECRAFT AND ASTROTELEPATHY LIES THE UNSPEAKABLE COLD OF THE INTERGALACTIC VOID. FEW HAVE VENTURED INTO THIS REALM AND NONE HAVE EVER RETURNED. IT IS THE GREAT BARRIER THAT DIVIDES GALAXY FROM GALAXY, A PLACE WHERE TIME AND SPACE CONSPIRE TO HOLD THE WORLDS APART WITH INCONCEIVABLE DISTANCES.
YET THE VOID IS NO LONGER EMPTY. AN IMMEASURABLY ANCIENT AND IMPLACABLE INTELLIGENCE MOVES THROUGH THE COLD AND THE DARKNESS, ITS MANY EYES FIXED ON THE DISTANT GLITTERING LIGHTS OF OUR GALAXY. THE GREAT DEVOURER MOVES BETWEEN THE STARS AND HUNGERS FOR THE FLESH OF ALL WHO LIE BEFORE IT. THIS GREAT ORGANISM, THIS MONSTROUS ENTITY, IS KNOWN AS THE TYRANID RACE.
EVEN BY NAMING THE GREAT DEVOURER CIVILISATIONS BETRAY THEIR IGNORANCE. EVERY THOUGHT AND ACTION, EVERY SPARK OF LIFE IN THE TYRANID RACE IS BOUND AND INTERLINKED INTO A SINGLE MIND, A SINGLE GREAT ENTITY THAT STRETCHES OVER LIGHT YEARS OF SPACE AND IS CONTROLLED BY THE IMMORTAL HIVE MIND. A BILLION TIMES A BILLION TYRANIDS STAND AT THE RIM OF THE GALAXY, YET EACH ONE IS NO MORE THAN A SINGLE CELL IN THE LIVING BODY OF THE HIVE MIND, THE DEVOURER OF WORLDS.
(Ashlee: Oh my kraking gourd. This is just so over-the-top! Listen to this, it's prose so purple I can taste the grape!)
You know what I think of this? I
think you aren't doing your job with the utmost seriousness! This is very important work, rebutting Imperial propaganda, and you are being
lazy and
shiftless as one would expect from a low-born country bumpkin redneck like yourself!
(Ashlee: ...I'll get Vior Or'es on to help be my counterpoint, then, okay? You can go back, wallowing in your own excess, and I'll do your job for you.)
...Hey, you do
not have to make me feel bad!
(Ashlee: I know you gotta look down on everyone or else you'll realize yer wastin' away, doin' nothin', havin' fun in a big ol' party in the Webway while
everyone moves on, but can't ya just be nice?)
Well, you're a large-sized jerk in a small-sized plastic cup!
(Ashlee: That was even funnier than the three-paragraphs of bad ghost story.)
An extra-large-sized jerk!
(Ashlee: Am I a cola or a lemon-lime soda?)
You're a
vanilla cola.
(Ashlee: Damn, that actually wounded me.)
Well, I suppose we're even, now. Should I summon the T'au?
(Ashlee: Sure, boss.)
The Tyranids are a race of alien predators that are invading the galaxy from the void beyond its edges. Like swarming insects falling upon precious crops, they devour all before them - consuming all live upon each world in their path, and leaving nothing but airless rocks in their wake. They are a threat to every sentient species in the galaxy, and their numbers are evergrowing.
(Ashlee: Well, that just ain't true, none of it. Besides, there are prey Nids, too. Not enough prey Nids, but some. And they don't kill everything, just make Nid worlds with Nid life.)
(Vior Or'es: I suppose, but I do fear that you may have too favorable a view of the Tyranids. To you, they may be...zoology, but to us Tau they are a savage and dire threat that cannot be underestimated nor romanticized.)
(Ashlee: Why didn't ya just ask 'em to find somewhere else to graze?)
(Vior Or'es: We painstakingly tried to communicate with the local leadership, only to find that they saw our doctrine of the Greater Good as "an imposition of civilization by prey animals that had forgotten what flight from danger was like". At least, that's what the Genestealer representative of the biome said. Hive Fleet Gorgon is a very ruthless adversary, one that is not compatible with other sophont societies.)
(Ashlee: That ain't true. I've seen Genestealers find their way in the Dark City. It's just that they're about Darwinism, an' there ain't no Darwinism in the Tau. They're just another kinda nature, but self-aware.)
For centuries now, the Magi Biologis and Ordo Xenos of the Imperium have sought to make sense of the Tyranid threat. It speaks volumes that - with the galaxy now in the grip of the Third Tyrannic War, and with Humanity having fought more battles against these rapacious aliens than can be tallied - these luminaries remain bewildered and horrified in equal measure.
(Vior Or'es: I was stationed on a distant world. I heard the gurgling, the choking, the dancing of the
things. I heard their sick, tedious laughter, their cries of excitement, and I saw them
drool. I clutched my weapon, I hid behind my Fire Caste guards, but I could
hear it stomp like an
earthquake's force. They are madness, they are not of this life, they are broken and monstrous and ever-changing, and may the T'au'va guide me to safety from the nightmares they put into me.)
(Ashlee: Eh, you just were dealin' with the predators. Get ya a prey one, or one who can get in yer head a li'l, and yer good.)
(Vior Or'es: No, you do not understand! They aren't just animals! They're
wrong, twisted and
fake. They will
hunt you, dying, screaming, crying, and they will
make more of them out of you.)
(Ashlee: Ya really got no idea what yer talkin' about. They're just gaddamned animals. I got a pet dwarf Hormagaunt named Wire.)
(Vior Or'es: I was
hunted by them at Coldfront Base! The
artificial monsters picked off the toughest Fire Caste members I'd
ever known to
turn them into their own kind! They
harvest people!)
(Ashlee: Well, uh, sure, but so do lions an' bears an' shit. Nature ain't always nice.)
(Vior Or'es: They
are not nature! Something
made them!)
(Ashlee: They seem "natural" enough. You listenin' to Ynathe again?)
(Vior Or'es: The Custodes, they must have made them!)
(Ashlee: ...Ynathe is a
conspiracy theorist. You wanna know what made the Nids? Evolution. That's it. Not everything's a conspiracy by the Imps.)
(Vior Or'es: Then why would they be so violently and utterly hostile towards the Greater Good?)
(Ashlee: Because the Greater Good's a bad joke. It ain't right. In nature, it's all about survival. Yer Greater Good is about makin' a
herd, an' makin' it
big enough that ain't nobody gonna fuck with it. That's all it is. Now, that's a valid evolutionary strategy, but most of the Nids don't work that way, so when they see somethin' tryin' to out-compete 'em, they band together and strike back. Nature ain't a garden. Nature ain't an aquarium tank. Nature is who can stay alive to breed the most. Lemme tell you what the Nids think of the Tau. They don't see 'civilization' or 'progress'. They see an invasive species tryin' to
crowd 'em out.)
(Vior Or'es: Then they do not understand anything of the Greater Good.)
(Ashlee: Oh, they understand it well. Pro'lly better than any of you.)
(Vior Or'es: Why must you be such a big, stupid turnip?)
(Ashlee: Oh, I'm just bein' honest. Yer cute when yer flustered.)
(Vior Or'es: I would never want to mate with you. Besides, that isn't under my control.)
(Ashlee: Right, yeah. Tau are
domesticated, Nids are
wild.)
It is clear that the Tyranids' technology is entirely biological, and far in advance of anything humanity has encountered in all its long millennia of conquest. Their war-beasts are armoured in chitinous plates, or possessed of natural defences such as chameleonic abilities or veiling clouds of exhaled spores. Tyranid guns, blades, transport craft, even void ships all are living beings, many taking the form of grotesque symbiotes grafted to their host creature for use in battle. The ammunition fired by Tyranid weapons is similarly organic, be it voracious chitin-armoured beetles, gouts of concentrated acids or bio-plasma, armour-piercing shard-beasts or eruptions of bioelectricity.
(Ashlee: Beautiful.)
(Vior Or'es: If they are not an army, why do they act like one?)
(Ashlee: They ain't an army. They're a
state, darwinistic, anarchic, and perfect.)
As far as the Magi Biologis can determine, it is the Hive Mind that drives the Tyranid swarms ever onwards towards the galactic core. Through the synaptic control web generated by node-beasts amidst the Tyranid ranks, the influence of the Hive Mind sstretches across battlefields, worlds, and even the vastness of the void itself. Wherever the grotesque bio-ships of the hive fleets swarm to attack, the presence of the Hive Mind moves with them and allows them to hunt and fight with supernatural synchronicity. What precisely the Hive Mind is Mankind remains ignorant to...the truth is that the Hive Mind is as far beyond the understanding of the galaxy's sentient races as they are beyond the comprehension of the cattle they farm and butcher.
(Ashlee: That's beauty. Perfect meritocracy. Self-improvement.)
(Vior Or'es: What made you like this?)
(Ashlee: What?)
(Vior Or'es: It could not have been the Imperium, as you seem perfectly fine with them. What caused a thinking, sapient sophont to become this callous and heartless entity?)
(Ashlee: Well, if you're mad I made fun of yer traumatic event, I'm sorry. Kinda realized that wasn't the right thing to say.)
(Vior Or'es: Do you wish you were not human?)
(Ashlee: Like, do I wish I was a Tau? Not really.)
(Vior Or'es: No, I am asking if you wish you were...unencumbered by complex emotions, by civilized life. Is that why you are turning yourself into this half-Tyranid creature? Do you want to be savage? Why must you be so savage, so strong? Why must you be a survivor?)
(Ashlee: I don't think I like you.)
(Vior Or'es: Who exploited your weakness, Ashlee Viola?)
(Ashlee: They are better than us, you know. The Nids, I mean.)
(Vior Or'es: What happened?)
(Ashlee: The Tau took Bluebonnet. They got a ton of Gue'vesa. My siblin' became one of 'em. Ze tried to convince me, tried to
get me to
give in. I kept putting it off, kept trying to avoid judgment from all the good little humans, kept tryin' to get my siblin' an' mommy an' daddy back. They turned hir into a
pet. That's what the Ethereals do.)
(Vior Or'es: They know best for all of us. Is it so wrong to listen?)
(Ashlee: Yer right. They do know best, or at least what the kindest thing to do is. The problem is that kindness creates dependency, and I'd rather be savage and free than happy and listening to my
owners.)
(Vior Or'es: What prevented you from coming to hir conclusions?)
(Ashlee: The Nids came. They overran Bluebonnet, massacred the Tau and everyone else. I was studying in the Tau-run university, then. A Zoanthrope blasted the wall, made a whole. It detonated the heads of two Water Caste historians. I screamed at it to go so I could get the hell out of this worthless planet. Ya know what it said? Not in words, in thoughts jammed into my head.)
(Vior Or'es: ...What did it say?)
(Ashlee: "I admire your honesty and drive". It didn't say it in its own words, though. It said it emotions and broken memories. I felt pride, compassion, an' strength, like a little babe impala that a lion had allowed to curl up next to it. I told it I just didn't want to submit. It said: "That is rare for your species, and submission would be acceptable were you not in our grazing-grounds." Hearin' it was hearin' feelin's of respect an' the stitched together voices of Imperial commissars and Water Caste propagandists it had heard an' slaughtered. It was an impression burned into my mind. It told me that the Tau were a complacent species, an' that it could tell I sought advancement and to be tested. It said I deserved to hear the Hive Mind, an' that it hoped I would find it someday. We understood each other, and the Zoanthrope marked me. I left Bluebonnet on an old Imperial ship, an' made my way to Aeneas. The Nids let me go. It was beautiful.)
(Vior Or'es: I see. So, would you say that the T'au took your sibling away, and that it was the Tyranids who showed you hir mistake and your inner strength?)
(Ashlee: I learned strength was everythin'.)
(Vior Or'es: Perhaps we can find you some therapy?)
It is difficult to say with any degree of certainty when Humanity first encountered the Tyranid menace. Some records suggest that Humanity - and also the Aeldari of Craftworld Iyanden - discovered a bizarre Tyranid megastructure in the Tiamet System, on the jungle world of Ziaphoria, as early as M35. This edifice is said to have spawned a continent, and to have projected from its mass of chtin and encephalitic tissue a horrifically powerful psychic signal that drew the Aeldari into fatal seizures...The first clue of the horror soon to fall on Tyran Primus was discovered by Imperial explorators. In performing a census of the worlds near to the far-flung outpost of Tyran Primus, they discovered entire planets scoured of all biological life. Not even the simplest bacteria survived on these denuded rocks.
(Vior Or'es: I cannot imagine the horrors of Iyanden.)
(Ashlee: Well, uh, Tyran Primus was full of life under the Nids. The Imperium wants to believe that world is dead so they don't feel obligated to go back, but was a paradise for our kind until the Nids there used up all the resources.)
(Vior Or'es: ...Our kind?)
(Ashlee: Sorry, "their kind". My point is that these people don't get that Nid life is still life. The Codex goes on to talk about the war, but it was really more of a stampede an' terraformin' kinda invasion. Nids ain't troops. They get direction from the Hive Mind, but they don't wanna hold territory. They just wanna live an' push out everythin' else. Sometimest they get too peckish and eat everythin' on a planet.)
An hour later the Tyran outpost was as good as lost. The bastions were overrun or destroyed, the defence lasers silent. Even the Guardsmen of Catachan, men and women who had reckoned themselves amongst the most stalwart of warriors, abandoned their posts and fled into the driving rain in search of an escape that did not exist.
(Ashlee: Ha! Serves 'em right. Damn big an' strong hard-ass fighters. Glad someone knocked 'em down a few pegs.)
Each hive fleet...displays distinctive hunting patterns and strategies, almost as though eah were an attempt by the Hive Mind to refine different methods of predating the galaxy's sentient life forms. The warrior organisms of Hive Fleet Jormungandr, for example, favour subterranean assault and deploy immense swarms of tunnelling, serpentine bioforms to strike at their victims from below. Hive Fleet Gorgon, by comparison, is infamous for the toxic spore clouds and biowarfare agents it unleashes in battle...Other hive fleets have been observed deploying ground-shaking masses of living tanks, sky-darkening swarms fo winged monsters, elusive broods of chameleonic apex predators, endless tides of expendable war-beasts and countlessother strategic permutations.
(Vior Or'es: We are...too familiar with Gorgon's "death clouds", yes.)
(Ashlee: ...You know what?)
(Vior Or'es: What?)
(Ashlee: Maybe I was a li'l hard on you before. Sounds like you've been through some shit. Well, sorry I was a real ass to ya. Agree to disagree?)
(Vior Or'es: Not very Tyranid of you.)
(Ashlee: I'll get there.)
(Vior Or'es: I would appreciate that. Might I ask a question?)
(Ashlee: Of course!)
(Vior Or'es: What might happen if the linked Tyranid biosphere develops a tool-using sapient species?)
(Ashlee: Well, it has, Genestealers, Hive Tyrants, Zoanthropes...)
(Vior Or'es: No, I mean one that the Hive Mind does not keep artificially limited for its own savage purposes. I am thinking of a sophont, one that could develop a civilization. If the Tyranids overrun the galaxy, could they simply create whole new polities through similar processes to those that created Humanity and the T'au?)
(Ashlee: That would require bandin' together, right? Ain't survivalist.)
(Vior Or'es: Well, yes, but Tyranid species can hunt in packs. It is possible, is it not?)
(Ashlee: I dunno. The idea of a Tyranid civilization just don't feel right.)
