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Orangebandguy wrote:
The cryptic clues about "The Outsider" has made someone I know think that The Outsider is the Hive Mind.

"That which lies outside is drawn to the harvest" or words to that effect.

Nothing personal but I HATE this interpritation of that quote. This is just a referance to the outsider joining the red harvest with the other C'tan. Get it "lies outside"-"the outsider"

This was from a descussion earlier thought I'd post it so I can share my belief with everyone. lol

How can a C'tan even be controlling the nids? Tyranids whole synaps network operate inside the warp, something the C'tan dont understand and abor.Also the C'tan have always had bodies and servant made of metal or energy sometimes both...how is there any similarty to a race of biological organisms to the C'tan and thier plots. None.

In fact the tyranids avoid the tomb world for 2 reasons:

1- the warp doesnt work around Necron constructs and units. No Warp, no Tyranid hive mind.

2- Tyranids feed off of biomatter. How does a Hive fleet benefit from a fight with necrons? The necrons live on barren rocks and have no biological matter themselves, so the tyranids avoid them.

It is explained the the Hive mind is the combined consiousness of the untold trillions of nids, kind of a chaos god of nids in a way.

These are the reasons not because some outlandish assumption that they hivemind is the outsider with no evidence or fluff to back it up. whoo sorry that on just grinds my gears every time.

prove that the outsider is postively not the hive mind is my only response. the hive mind could turn out to be barney for all we know because frankly GW hasn't told us what the hive mind is

Your right I cannot. No one can till it is written in some codex or reliable BL novel the exact words "The Hivemind is not the outsider". But following that line of logic there are many things in 40k fluff that are now open to wild interpretation.

I just think its a silly unfounded theory.

I agree with this. For some reason, there is a drive by fluff theorists to link EVERYTHINGEVERYTHINGEVERYTHINGEVER to the Old Ones or the C'Tan, including the genesis of all the game races. Some of the connections are plausible, while others... not so much.

Humans- It seems there is something in Xenology that suggests we got created by the Old Ones..?
Eldar/Dark Eldar- I seem to think that they got created by the Old Ones, but I can't remember what made me think that...
Orks- Yup. Old ones made them.
Necrons- Duh.
Chaos- Well, the Old Ones made the Warp, it seems... So that works.
Tau- Some reference in Xenology that implies the Eldar made them? I have not actually read it, but that's what I have heard.
Tyranids- No evidence.

As for "The Emperor is an Old One who is controlling the Tyranids to get himself eaten so he can be reborn... No. Just...no.

Personally I hate the interpretation that the Hive Mind is a single organism.

That seems to contradict the very nature of the term "Hive Mind."

Orks and eldar are products of the old ones to fight the C'tan. Hence there crazy psykic abilities.

Tyranids I just settle with the fact that they are a alien race from beyond our galaxy, completely foriegn, the most xenos of xenos. I beleive it even says in one if not all the nid codexes that they are from beyond our galaxy. Where did they come from?- the last galaxy they ate. What is the Hive Mind?- All the little tyranid organisms warp presence combined into a massive yet mutli trillion consiousness.

This makes sense to me and is well founded.

Interestingly, isnt the Emporers concsiousness now splintered to the point of basically being a hive mond type thing, *NOT* the tyranid one, just a similar type of multi conciousness gubbin.

I've always thought the 'nids are heavily based off the Buggers from Enders Game and subsequent books personally.

del'Vhar wrote:I've always thought the 'nids are heavily based off the Buggers from Enders Game and subsequent books personally.

Oooo, never thought of that. Almost all sci-fi settings have an insect-like hive mind in there somewhere. Tyranids, Buggers, the Bugs from Starship Troopers, Zerg, ect.

Xca|iber wrote:Personally I hate the interpretation that the Hive Mind is a single organism.

That seems to contradict the very nature of the term "Hive Mind."

Im sure that the hive mind are a few select organisims who vote on everything the hive does.........

Actually yeah, I forgot the Arachnids were hive minded in the Troopers book, IIRC someone makes a comment about how the hive mind probably finds humans stranger than humans find the hive mind, though that may have been enders game again...I read them both recently, one after the other

Is there warp energy outside the galaxy? Why would there be, if the old ones never left the galaxy (as far as we know)?
So why would Tyranids be warp-based if they are from outside the galaxy?
It seems to me that GW is moving away from warp-nids, by the fact zoeys don't use the warp, nids don't travel within the warp, etc.

I thought nids had a negative effect on the warp, rather than actually used it? I figured that the psychic clutter of the hive mind basically jams stuff that uses the warp
(Though there is a good chance this is fluff fail on my part)

Well duh the hive mind is not Ctan. It is actually a grot named Jerry who ran away and got trapped in a volcano and all the nids are actually holograms and whoever they eat are actually in Mexico drinking tea and talking about the World Series. Jk

The truth is we dont know and we will probly never know because its more grimdark if the nids have no face.

Yes, fluffheads do tend to get rather over-excited about the C'tan. (I know this, because I'm a fluff-head, and I do.)

I think if GW aren't telling us now, they never will. They'll never give conclusive proof, better to keep us guessing!

Joetaco wrote:prove that the outsider is postively not the hive mind is my only response. the hive mind could turn out to be barney for all we know because frankly GW hasn't told us what the hive mind is

Proving a negative is nigh-impossible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Klawz wrote:Is there warp energy outside the galaxy?

Anywhere there is life, there is the warp. The Old Ones did not create Empyrean, they merely created races that used it as a weapon against the C'tan.

Tyranids psychic powers and abilities still have everything to do with the warp. Were does it say zoanthropes dont use the warp? They are conduits for the Hive minds psychic powers through the warp. Is says on the page describing tyranid psykers that they dont use there powers through the warp in any fathomable way but instead draw there power through the hive mind. Since the Hive mind is a combined psychic consiousnes in the warp its still psychic powers, just being used in a way we cannot understand them.

and the shadow in the warp is not a negative in the warp, it is the overwhelming psychic presence of the Hive mind in the warp. Its power in the warp is so great it smothers everything else out. Kind of like if a chaos god were trying to come throught the warp in a specific place the psychic interference would be unspeakable.

Laughing God wrote:Tyranids psychic powers and abilities still have everything to do with the warp. Were does it say zoanthropes dont use the warp?

Tyranid Codex page 33.

Tyranid psykers focus the Hive Mind, not the warp.

Melissia wrote:

Joetaco wrote:prove that the outsider is postively not the hive mind is my only response. the hive mind could turn out to be barney for all we know because frankly GW hasn't told us what the hive mind is

Proving a negative is nigh-impossible.

GW's background stories aren't internally consistent enough or edited well enough to really apply many of the 'standards of debate' to them.

It is a shame, and it is also a lame cop-out by GW, but there it is...

Joetaco wrote:prove that the outsider is postively not the hive mind is my only response. the hive mind could turn out to be barney for all we know because frankly GW hasn't told us what the hive mind is

Eh... yes, GW has told us *exactly* what the Hive Mind is.

Codex: Tyranids (5th Ed), page 6:

"The Hive Mind holds all Tyranid creatures in a psychic bond that enables them to act together as one gestalt organism. It is a single coordinating sentience formed from untold billions of individual consciousnesses, each of which is a Tyranid."

This is a wonderful article that puts an easy-to-grasp spin on the Hive Mind, lays out simply why Synapse creatures are important and has some interesting points on why we (as players, or as player-characters) can never hope to really comprehend the true nature of the Hive Mind, owing largely to its scale relative to ours. It is a form of life unlike anything else - a sentience on a cosmic scale. I suppose the closest analogy I could produce would be a multi-galactic network of computers, except said network is "alive" (though not in a way comparable to our own form of "life").

Laughing God wrote:
Tyranids psychic powers and abilities still have everything to do with the warp. Were does it say zoanthropes dont use the warp?
Tyranid Codex page 33.

Tyranid psykers focus the Hive Mind, not the warp.

Pg.6

Hive Mind holds all Tyranid creatures in a PSYCHIC bond.

But i see what you are saying. I think GW has started to controdic itself with the nids in that way. Got themselves in a real pickle with that one so to speak. Still gives no supporting connection to the the Hive Mind and the C'tan.

Beat me to it Xyptc lol

Nice thread. I always thought the same.

Xca|iber wrote:Personally I hate the interpretation that the Hive Mind is a single organism.

That seems to contradict the very nature of the term "Hive Mind."

I enterpited the "Hive Mind" To be some what akin to the "Buggers" in the Novel Ender's Game

The Buggers had a Queen or Multiple Queens and the "soldier's" were their eyes and ears. They were never able to have their own thoughts because the thoughts of the Queen or Queens were the only thing they knew.

I think of the Tyranids as such.

del'Vhar wrote: I thought nids had a negative effect on the warp, rather than actually used it? I figured that the psychic clutter of the hive mind basically jams stuff that uses the warp
(Though there is a good chance this is fluff fail on my part)

In a way yes, but after they incorporated the Eldar DNA into their gene pool they began to mutate some of the "stronger" bioforms into what we now know as Zonothropes (please excuse me for any misspellings). After that, they began to have some impact on the Warp, but because the Bioforms we of the Imperium (I'm IG) have encountered thus far have only known what we would call "The great Hunger". As such I believe that as a whole, unless proven otherwise, it is safe to assume that they "race" we have come to know as the Tyranids have close to no impact on the Warp, that we can detect.

gets shot for Removed as ordered by the Inquisition.

The Hive Mind's "shadow on the warp" is really just a reflection of the great mass of psychic energy that is the hive mind extending its presence across the warp so that it might manipulate it for the purpose of travel.

"Psychic" doesn't neccessitate the use of the warp. Orks have psychic capability, but don't rely on the power of the warp, they use their own "WAAAGH!!" energy. In a similar vein, Tyranids have a psychic bond, only in the sense that their collective consciousness coalesces as a single "mind" rather than each individual bug having it's own. I wish I could elaborate, but my connection is being terribly laggy today.
Also, Klawz, the warp isn't a specific place, or a tangible "energy" it's the collective emotions of several races, including humans and eldar. The reason that humans utilise the warp for their psychic use, is because that's their main collective of THEIR psychic energy. Eldar, don't use it because they are at a much greater risk when they do, because they have such a heightened psychic capability (as a direct result of their heightened consciousness). Every eldar has his/her own personal psychic capability, without using the warp.

ZoomDakkaDakka wrote:"Psychic" doesn't neccessitate the use of the warp. Orks have psychic capability, but don't rely on the power of the warp, they use their own "WAAAGH!!" energy. In a similar vein, Tyranids have a psychic bond, only in the sense that their collective consciousness coalesces as a single "mind" rather than each individual bug having it's own. I wish I could elaborate, but my connection is being terribly laggy today.
Also, Klawz, the warp isn't a specific place, or a tangible "energy" it's the collective emotions of several races, including humans and eldar. The reason that humans utilise the warp for their psychic use, is because that's their main collective of THEIR psychic energy. Eldar, don't use it because they are at a much greater risk when they do, because they have such a heightened psychic capability (as a direct result of their heightened consciousness). Every eldar has his/her own personal psychic capability, without using the warp.

I was kind of imagining it as a sub-universe, sitting inside of ours. I thought the Old Ones had made it. Also, the Orks use the warp.

Orks do not use the warp, as written multiple times in the codex, as well as once or twice in other sources. The behaviour of orks activates a gestalt psychic field that surrounds them, called "WAAAGH!!" Energy. This psychic field is most evident during times of conflict, for the orks, such as war. This is how orkish beliefs, ie. "Red ones go faster" come true. It's been noted by imperials, that Orkish technology rarely works when not being used by an ork. The commonly accepted theory, is that the "WAAAGH!!" energy of the orks, is in fact, what makes these things work, as well as making their believes "come true". Ork weirdboyz further harness the WAAAGH!! energy, using it as an imperial psyker might use the warp.
The Warp, is kind of a sub-universe, it's a separate dimension, which is what I was trying to get at. You can't leave a certain area of the universe, and no longer be affected, or have access to the warp, because it's not in our dimension to begin with. I really don't know anything about the old ones having made it, so I'll have to take your word for that, thought it doesn't really affect either of our points (which seem to be the same?).

ZoomDakkaDakka wrote:Orks do not use the warp, as written multiple times in the codex, as well as once or twice in other sources.

They use it for transport. They don't draw from the warp for power directly though, they draw from the gestalt psychic field known as the WAAAGH!, which itself, being a psychic field, must be a presence in the warp.

So, they don't DRAW on the warp, but their psychic powers still have a presence?

IronChaos wrote:Nice thread. I always thought the same.

Agreed! Keep it coming!

I don't like the Outsider/C'Tan explanations either... They just don't fit well enough for my taste.

Xyptc wrote:
...we (as players, or as player-characters) can never hope to really comprehend the true nature of the Hive Mind, owing largely to its scale relative to ours. It is a form of life unlike anything else - a sentience on a cosmic scale.

QFT! A little OT, but it's like trying to imagine what a 5th dimension would "look" like to us, in our reality... We, as humans, just don't have the mental capacity to comprehend it! Nobodies fault, we've evolved in this 4 dimensional space, and it's all we've needed to survive to this point... Physicists may one day find proof of other dimensions, but we won't be able to "see" these dimensions!

Like others have said, the Shadow in the Warp is not a null zone, but a overwhelming psychic presence.

I like to draw the analogy of the Shadow in the Warp that I got from this years World Cup. If only one person in your section of the stadium (part of the galaxy) is blowing a vuvuzela (is a Tyranid) you can still have a conversation (send a psychic message) despite the noise (and you can also find the vuvuzela blower/tyanid to focus your attacks on! * )... But if 90% of the people in your section of the stadium (part of the galaxy) are all blowing vuvuzelas together (are Tyanids attacking on mass), a single individual is impossible to single out, the combined noise sounds like swarm of angry bees, and it's difficult to have a conversation (send a psychic message) with the person sitting next to you (planet to planet, or even between two points on the same planet), let alone some distance away (across systems)...

Unless your in a transport, the ultimate psychic protection in the galaxy!! Which GWs recent Bug FAQ states, "SitW does not effect units in transports".......

*Disclaimer: I'm am not encouraging people to attack vuvuezla blowers... Unless you really have to!

The Tyranids do, without any doubt (as in, it's written everywhere in the 5th Ed Codex) make use of "the Warp". The problem we have is that GW also sttated that the Tyranids "do not draw on the Warp in any fathomable way".

Now, when you put the two statements together they either conflict (bad, and not what we want) or must mean something a little more obscure. When you stop and think about the phrase "in any fathomable way" included at the end of the sentence, things become clearer.

Tyranids to not draw on the Warp in the same way that we humans, or the Eldar, or any other race do. That is to sayy, they do not harness Warp currents, make Pacts with Daemons or invoke the powers of other Warp entities/gods. Rather, the Tyranids harness the power of their collective presence withinthe Warp (their collective psychic bond, or Hive Mind).



To explain that a little further, an analogy.

The Tyranid Termagant fires its Fleshborer at you. You're hit by a Borer Beetle. Now, you've just been hit by "a Tyranid". You then pick up a rock from on the ground and throw it back, hitting the Termagant. Both the Beetle and the rock are compoased of atoms, but only one is a "Tyranid" owing to the structure imposed upon it by the Tyranid race.

Similarly, a Zoanthrope channels the power of the Hive Mind to hurl a blast of energy at a Librarian. The Librarian taps into the Warp to hurl some lightning back at the Zoanthrope. Both atttacks were composed of "Warp energy", but the Zoanthrope's attack originated with the power of the Tyranid Hive Mind (equivalent to firing a Tyranid-grown Beetle), where as the Librarian simply drew upon the untapped Warp (equivalent to picking up the stone). The ultimate nature of the two is the same ("Warp energy"), but the manner in which the attacks are achieved are fundementally different.


This, if anything, makes the Tyranids even more scary than when it was simply "Zoanthropes tap into the Warp", because now GW have specified that Tyranids have a crazy level of control over the Warp, as in their collective Hive Mind can actually generate its own currents and powers, at will.