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I remember reading something that said that when man first left Terra, it sent probes to the edge of the universe. The probes sent back data that said all planets were or nearly were, contacted by Orks. So maybe the nids hope to do a little recon. Study the "small" ork population and how others fight them and get dinner in the proccess.

Stonerhino wrote:Or that as a race the Tyranids are so stupid that they are purposely avoiding the means to greatly increase their resource intake. Just so that they have a reason to fight other races.

Kind of like choosing to believe the Eldar are a dying race and dumb enough to actually fight on the tabletop using their living population.

40k fluff isn't meant to work out sensibly. It's there to be an awesome backdrop for awesome armies fighitng it out. I really doubt the witers studied animal behavioral patterns when they made the galactic map.

'Man, you've got these bugs right? They travel space in bigger bugs! And they eat entire worlds!' is about the most complex the initial concept for Tyranids likely was. Now they're just trying to keep the new stuff fitting the original fluff despite it being a bit silly. Some people like making up reasons for why races might or might not do things. I simply go off what's written. Being chased by something was one of several hypothesis.

I prefer the one that the vast majority of the race is sitting outside the galaxy, occasionally poking at it with a stick (hive fleet) to see what happens, before launching an all out galactic invasion..

That's just how fluff develops. You get an initial idea that gets expanded upon. With the Tyranids it makes sence for them to have been chased by something. Otherwise the race's fluff kind of just stops evolving.

Axlbush wrote:Its the two missing marine Legions. The Emperor foresaw the threat of these creatures and created two brothers, one of them a blank, specifically to take the fight to the nids. The masterplan was to herd them back to the Imperium where they would then be caught between the hammer and the anvil of the combined Legions. Its taken a long time but the brothers are finally coming home. Unfortunately, Horus getting in a huff wasn't part of the plan.....

That's awesome. This should be canon, or at least a canon theory. It's almost as awesome as my theory that they're running from Vulkan, Leman Russ. who care chasing them in Leman Russ's sleigh.

BlaxicanX wrote:

Axlbush wrote:Its the two missing marine Legions. The Emperor foresaw the threat of these creatures and created two brothers, one of them a blank, specifically to take the fight to the nids. The masterplan was to herd them back to the Imperium where they would then be caught between the hammer and the anvil of the combined Legions. Its taken a long time but the brothers are finally coming home. Unfortunately, Horus getting in a huff wasn't part of the plan.....

That's awesome. This should be canon, or at least a canon theory. It's almost as awesome as my theory that they're running from Vulkan, Leman Russ. who care chasing them in Leman Russ's sleigh.

But it doesn't work, even in 40ks wonky fluff. The Tyranids, if they were running, started running long, long, long before even the War in Heaven in the Milky Way. They've been through a dozen galaxies now, simple travel time puts them older than the old ones.

Not really. The galaxies eaten by the Tyranids could be a bunch of dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way. Heck, their home Galaxy can be Canis Dwarf Galaxy and the race they ran from is one of the known races from the Milky Way.

With the current fluff the Tyranid threat can be as big or small as you want it to be.

Nids are actually Daemons. They're running from Draigo. Actually, I like the Russ/ Vulkan idea.

Maybe it's Boreale from DoW. They're afraid of his excellent strategic prowess. They obviously FEHLED against his STEEHL RHEIN!

In all seriousness, they're probably looking for a bigger happy meal.

-Loki- wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:

Axlbush wrote:Its the two missing marine Legions. The Emperor foresaw the threat of these creatures and created two brothers, one of them a blank, specifically to take the fight to the nids. The masterplan was to herd them back to the Imperium where they would then be caught between the hammer and the anvil of the combined Legions. Its taken a long time but the brothers are finally coming home. Unfortunately, Horus getting in a huff wasn't part of the plan.....

That's awesome. This should be canon, or at least a canon theory. It's almost as awesome as my theory that they're running from Vulkan, Leman Russ. who care chasing them in Leman Russ's sleigh.

But it doesn't work, even in 40ks wonky fluff. The Tyranids, if they were running, started running long, long, long before even the War in Heaven in the Milky Way. They've been through a dozen galaxies now, simple travel time puts them older than the old ones.

The Warp.

Done!

so annoying how GW keeps rewriting histroy - really screws the fluff and the fun in the background reading

I like three of the suggestions so far;

1 Running from another hive fleet - bigger meaner one
2 Running from more orks
3 Running from 2 of the emperors sons

What about them not running from the orks - but having eaten all of them in their own galaxies and now looking for more of the orks or maybe even the LAST OF THE ORKS are in the milkyway

Although from a human perspective it seems the orks are endless - but we are still wet behind the ears in terms of the 40k timeline

Melissia wrote:They aren't blanks.

They aren't blanks in name, but they wind up being similar in function. Makes sense considering one is a C'tan creation and the other could possibly be an Old One. Two view points and solutions to a problem.

Ignatius wrote:Are we just speculating? I thought it was because they had already eaten all the planets in their galaxy, and are moving on to the new one. Similar to eating planets. Eat one, move to the next. Just on a larger scale.

This. It's pretty much stated in the 5th ed Tyranid codex they've consumed multiple galaxies before the Milky Way.

Dark Apostle 666 wrote:Squats.

So..that's where they went!

Cerebrium wrote:

Ignatius wrote:Are we just speculating? I thought it was because they had already eaten all the planets in their galaxy, and are moving on to the new one. Similar to eating planets. Eat one, move to the next. Just on a larger scale.

This. It's pretty much stated in the 5th ed Tyranid codex they've consumed multiple galaxies before the Milky Way.

Rulebook, actually. Page 166.

"Behind the Hive Fleets lie the barren husks of a dozen galaxies already consumed."

sumi808 wrote:so annoying how GW keeps rewriting histroy - really screws the fluff and the fun in the background reading

I like three of the suggestions so far;

1 Running from another hive fleet - bigger meaner one
2 Running from more orks
3 Running from 2 of the emperors sons

What about them not running from the orks - but having eaten all of them in their own galaxies and now looking for more of the orks or maybe even the LAST OF THE ORKS are in the milkyway

Although from a human perspective it seems the orks are endless - but we are still wet behind the ears in terms of the 40k timeline

1. I don't really see the Tyrands running from more Tyranids. I'm sure different hive fleets in the Milky Way have fought each other. And it could be possible they're all running from this super hive fleet. I just don't see it.

2. If the Tyranids are running from something, I can see them running from Orks to be a good possibility. After all, Orks are spread out across the universe like I've read others on here say. For all we know, a galaxy or two of Orks could have united and beat the out of the Tyranids.

3. Least likely in my opinion. The possibility that they are running from two of the Emperor's sons would imply one of two things: that it's the 2nd and 11th legion primarchs, which is highly unlikely because the Emperor supposedly had them killed (read HH novel First Heretic. It mentions something about it). OR the Emperor created two more primarchs (or two completely different beings, but I doubt that honestly) and sent them after the Tyranids. I don't see that happening.

Just my two cents

It would only take 35 cycles for one hive fleet to send a fleet to every single habitable planet in our galaxy. Assuming it took say two years to eat and then move on per planet, that's only 70 years for our entire galaxy. It's entirely likely that they ate themselves out of their own galaxy.

How did you come to that figure?

It's a bit hard to know how long it would take them to move about considering we don't know their sublight speed, FTL speed via a Narvhal, what distance they have to be from a system before a Narvhal can put them into FTL and at what distance from a system they need to drop out of FTL to finish the journey at sublight.

-Loki- wrote:How did you come to that figure?

It's a bit hard to know how long it would take them to move about considering we don't know their sublight speed, FTL speed via a Narvhal, what distance they have to be from a system before a Narvhal can put them into FTL and at what distance from a system they need to drop out of FTL to finish the journey at sublight.

I have no idea what you are going on about, but I'm assuming the basis is "we don't know how fast their ships go"

Also why assume 2 years per planet stripping?
What basis does that have?

IHateNids wrote:

-Loki- wrote:How did you come to that figure?

It's a bit hard to know how long it would take them to move about considering we don't know their sublight speed, FTL speed via a Narvhal, what distance they have to be from a system before a Narvhal can put them into FTL and at what distance from a system they need to drop out of FTL to finish the journey at sublight.

I have no idea what you are going on about, but I'm assuming the basis is "we don't know how fast their ships go"

Well, yeah.

We don't know their sublight (standard) speed.
We don't know their faster than light (FTL) speed they acheive with a Narvhal.
We don't know how close they need to be to a system for the Narvhal to be able to interact with its gravity well.
We don't know how close they can get before they need the Narvhal to stop doing its FTL thing.

These things all constribute to how fast they can travel around the galaxy, not to mention time taken defeating defenders and stripping a planet.

Flat out stating 70 years to eat the galaxy is odd considering we don't know any of this.

The Tyranids are fleeing from the missing primarchs, who found the Tyranid home galaxy and began to kill everything that they found. Now, with the 'nids running, the primarchs are returning...

How did they get there so fast? Tzeench wanted to wipe the Tyranids out before they could become an unstoppable threat, and he removed some primarchs and their legions. he accelerates the warp currents to get them there sooner, and sends them back in time to when the 'Nids would be weaker.

Inquisitor Roeth wrote

3. Least likely in my opinion. The possibility that they are running from two of the Emperor's sons would imply one of two things: that it's the 2nd and 11th legion primarchs, which is highly unlikely because the Emperor supposedly had them killed (read HH novel First Heretic. It mentions something about it). OR the Emperor created two more primarchs (or two completely different beings, but I doubt that honestly) and sent them after the Tyranids. I don't see that happening.

It could be argued that the Emperor allowed it to be believed that the 2nd and 11th primarchs were killed. After all its a lot easier to win over your sons and adoring fans by claiming "We are setting out to conquer the universe in the name of Man and Enlightenment!" rather than "We are setting out to conquer the universe in the name of Man and Enlightenment, though we'd best hurry up cos there's a force that will potentially be a lot more dangerous and numerous than us tearing its way towards us in the opposite direction."

So the two sons are sent off in secret. Its not as if the Emperor was averse to keeping his subjects in the dark. Nor should anyone take for truth everything within a novel entitled "The First Heretic".....

To be fair, i'm not really up to speed on nid fluff and I respect all your counter arguements. Its a bit of a grandiose theory, afterall

I still reckon they're running from chuck norris...

Axlbush wrote:

Inquisitor Roeth wrote

3. Least likely in my opinion. The possibility that they are running from two of the Emperor's sons would imply one of two things: that it's the 2nd and 11th legion primarchs, which is highly unlikely because the Emperor supposedly had them killed (read HH novel First Heretic. It mentions something about it). OR the Emperor created two more primarchs (or two completely different beings, but I doubt that honestly) and sent them after the Tyranids. I don't see that happening.

It could be argued that the Emperor allowed it to be believed that the 2nd and 11th primarchs were killed. After all its a lot easier to win over your sons and adoring fans by claiming "We are setting out to conquer the universe in the name of Man and Enlightenment!" rather than "We are setting out to conquer the universe in the name of Man and Enlightenment, though we'd best hurry up cos there's a force that will potentially be a lot more dangerous and numerous than us tearing its way towards us in the opposite direction."

So the two sons are sent off in secret. Its not as if the Emperor was averse to keeping his subjects in the dark. Nor should anyone take for truth everything within a novel entitled "The First Heretic".....

To be fair, i'm not really up to speed on nid fluff and I respect all your counter arguements. Its a bit of a grandiose theory, afterall

If the Emperor sent them, I'd be interested to know how they got 12 galaxies away billions of years before the Emperor was even born, considering warp travel (which could explain the time difference) is dependant on the astronomican, which barely reaches the fringes of the galaxy. Once they leave the galaxy, they're travelling blind., let alone 12 galaxies away. And if it's true, why would the Emperor have then chase the Tyranids towards the Milky Way? Wouldn't he be getting them to do it to keep them away?

Chaos did it would make sense except Chaos hasn't been shown to even care about them.

Fair enough, Loki. I don't have enough knowledge of the fluff to counter that - i got no idea at what point they started "running".

The hypothesis could still stand that they weren't running at first and simpy migrating, but once the Emperor became aware of them he sent his sons to herd them.

As for why he'd have them chase the nids towards the galaxy, my original suggestion was that by the time the sons had herded them into range the Imperium would have been firmly established and the Legions would be able to combine their power and destroy them utterly.

Sticking with it, if one of the sons, lets say the second, is a blank, perhaps the 11th has some power which enables him to locate the nids, or to be able to navigate the unknown.
Originally I quite liked the idea of this primarch being a techno-supremo who could create weaponry and bionics perfect for fighting the nids. Maybe this idea is still valid in that he can create something to track the threat, or reach it.

I likw how that sounds Axlbrush, but I'm still wondering "How does someone get 12 galaxies away in just (insert time since horus heresay)?"

I assume when people say running from the two Primarchs, that includes their full Legions behind them at Pre Heresy strenght right?

Otherwise.....

Yeah, they've got their legions in tow. A legion of blanks should sure be able to put the boot in. Its unconfirmed whether the nids realise there's more than one legion facing them!

IHatenid, I'm not too clued up on the distances and times we are talking about so its hard to cover that angle. Wouldn't 10000 years be enough time to cross 12 galaxies using warp travel?

I can go with that figure. I still reckon they are running from chuck norris, the last unshattered C'Tan

Axlbush wrote:Yeah, they've got their legions in tow.

Don't forget the little tidbits in the HH series that suggests one of those legions was wiped out by the Space Wolves, and the other was absorbed into the Ultramarines.

These sort of conspiracy theories are always great, because they require selectively ignoring parts of the fluff. Like the Hive Mind is a C'tan one.

-Loki- wrote:
These sort of conspiracy theories are always great, because they require selectively ignoring parts of the fluff. Like the Hive Mind is a C'tan one.

Why do you choose to ignore this one? I know this is OT, and that there is no proof either way, but do you have any firm reason for this belief? (not trying to shoot down your theory, just asking why it was launched)