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pm713 wrote:
I think one is mentioned in the Ultramarine novels.

Yup. So they are still canon as far as things are concerned. Nothing has replaced them.

 Overread wrote:
As Tyranid lore is written reports I think that Norn Queens just don't get much of a mention because you don't typically get onto a Hive Ship and make it off alive again.

I think there's also a bit of debate as to where a Norn Queen begins and a Hive Ship ends; which is to say that they could easily be one and the same organism or a duality bound so tight that one can't live without the other.

The Dominatrix exists much like that - at least in the Epic 40K setting it had a throne upon which the Dominatrix rode the beast below it.

The dominatrix was the beast the Norn Queen rode in when they came to th surface themselves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I think one is mentioned in the Ultramarine novels.

Yup. So they are still canon as far as things are concerned. Nothing has replaced them.

The novels are not official canon. The codexes are. The codexes update and rewrite stuff from old novels all the time. That books story is kind of mentioned in the codex pg 16. The Belly of the Beast. But again, no mention of Norn Queens as an actual entity any more.

 Lance845 wrote:

The novels are not official canon. The codexes are. The codexes update and rewrite stuff from old novels all the time. That books story is kind of mentioned in the codex pg 16. The Belly of the Beast. But again, no mention of Norn Queens as an actual entity any more.

You seem under the impression that there is official canon with 40k. I assure you nothing of the sort exists.

 Lance845 wrote:


The dominatrix was the beast the Norn Queen rode in when they came to th surface themselves.

I've a feeling that you're right, but that the title of Norn Queen shifted away from the powerful psychic atop the dominatrix a fair while ago. The Dominatrix "unit" always has a rider which is the one that is tied to the hive mind - essentially a super zoanthrope; whilst the main body of the beast below is its carrier and warrior.


Norn Queens might also ride atop the same transport beasts, though I don't think we've ever had one appear outside a hive ship.

 Niiai wrote:
Can I just list 1 question I have about the tyranid 'biomass' thing. And one comment about them. This has always confused me.

- Biomass. What is that? Is it just 'building mass'? What is it made out of? Is it just a neureshing liquid, or are there DNA strains in there? Supposebly the tyranids avolve after getting acess to new tyranid material. In the codex the elar are preventing tyranid fleets to meet so they do not share bioomass. But why is this? Can't the tyranids just manipulate forth some DNA?

Also, when they eat the plannet, why on earth do they leave stones behind? Shurley they would need some form of mineral in their diet. And most life on earth get their power from the sun. Sun charges plants, things eat plants, and around we go. Why do they not build big organic Dyson spheres? You know, just to absorb as much energy as possibly. Shurley a surpluss of energy must be included there somewhere? I don't just buy that biomass is just biological mass that used to be other things. Mineral and energy must be in there somwehere. Can the tyranid not transmitt sequences of DNA around? Do they have to bring samples near each other? Do they work like scientists do with CRISPR? They can only cut and glue DNA together, they can not create artificial DNA?

-Anyway. the comment about them. In the materix movies the religion of the programs have this religion about returning from the source. It is like raw unshaped creation. I think it is inspiered by some eastern religions but I am unsure of witch it is. It seems like the tyranids wants everything to return to the great pool of biomass. And while it sucks for most things, some enteties like the swarmlord and other hive tyrants get reincarnated. The race is eficiantly imortal. Am I the only one who thinks some of this is an inherert trait of the tyranids?

Good points. one could argue, they are really a sort of released doomsday weapon that just keeps going. The whole Tyranid process is amazingly inefficient, adn as something that has absorbed countless forms of sun converting energy forms into its DNA databank, it would be far far more efficient to do as you say, or if less technologically adept, settle down and grow plants, raise a family, complain about how the new hive mind is lazy and disrespectful and never calls...

 Lance845 wrote:

 Overread wrote:
As Tyranid lore is written reports I think that Norn Queens just don't get much of a mention because you don't typically get onto a Hive Ship and make it off alive again.

I think there's also a bit of debate as to where a Norn Queen begins and a Hive Ship ends; which is to say that they could easily be one and the same organism or a duality bound so tight that one can't live without the other.

The Dominatrix exists much like that - at least in the Epic 40K setting it had a throne upon which the Dominatrix rode the beast below it.

The dominatrix was the beast the Norn Queen rode in when they came to th surface themselves.

Not quite. The Dominatrix was the ground counterpart to the Norn Queens and was a composite creature as per Epic Hive War: the big bestial creature, and the Giger-styled alien "space jockey" fused to the top. The big creature provided the bulk and ranged weaponry, while the jockey provided the intelligence and psychic might. Neither was the Dominatrix alone. The Norn Queens were never described as moving anywhere. Their physical appearance was in fact never described until the Ultramarines novel Warriors of Ultramar about the invasion of Tarsis Ultra, and that depicted the Norn Queen as fused to a wall and essentially comprising the entire room, with lots of organs busily laying eggs or live Tyranids.

 Frazzled wrote:

Good points. one could argue, they are really a sort of released doomsday weapon that just keeps going. The whole Tyranid process is amazingly inefficient, adn as something that has absorbed countless forms of sun converting energy forms into its DNA databank, it would be far far more efficient to do as you say, or if less technologically adept, settle down and grow plants, raise a family, complain about how the new hive mind is lazy and disrespectful and never calls...

Planets don't have the resources needed to sustain the Tyranids in the long term. Hive Fleet Tiamet is doing just what you are suggesting, and it still needs to raid nearby planets to feed itself.

My personal fluff is that the Tyranids we see are just the weapon organisms of the species, with the goal of destroying everything that could be a threat to the Hive. To me, the entire stripping a planet of biomass isn't about keeping any individual Hive Fleet going, it is about using what can easily be accessed and denying resources to the enemy. I think of it as a galaxy wide version of Sherman's march, where he took everything his army could carry and burned the rest. I think that in some other galaxy Tyranid organisms are mining asteroids and absorbing energy from stars to keep and grow the actually Hive. In fact, I think that the Hive Fleets were originally grown in a way that makes more sense, and then they were thrown into our galaxy to destroy. In this interpretation, the resources a Hive Fleet gains by consuming biomass is equivalent to taking bullets from a dead enemy soldier-using an available tool to support the mission, not the mission itself.

I think that the reason they leave barren rock behind is that it takes too much time for minimal gain to consume the minerals. When the goal is to leave a planet unusable, digesting the very rocks isn't going to be worth the effort. Sure, a technological species could still mine the remains of the planet, but so what? After all, there are plenty of asteroids and barren worlds that could be used in the same way, the Hive Fleet is better off hunting down home planets and colonies and devouring them instead.

As far as evolving new traits go, I think that the Hive Fleet simply lets there be a lot of mutations. Most of them will be harmful or at best not useful, but a few will be of benefit in the battle at hand. Letting a few hundred hormagants die faster to learn that a particular slime coating on the carapace deflects Tau lasers is worth it. Once that discovery is made, the Hive Fleet can grow all of the hormagaunts the same way. Many fast growing organisms like bacteria do the same-it is basically the evolutionary equivalent of throwing handfuls of dice at a problem and looking for 6's.

In the case of the Hive Fleet that is sitting on a planet, I think it is again a matter of rapid use of resources. I think that if they wanted to, the Hive Fleet could grow organisms that do photosynthesis and break down rocks for minerals and basically have its own Tyranid biosphere. Instead the Hive Fleet is raiding other worlds for biomass because stealing it is faster than making it. I would not be surprised if it was doing both-whatever it is growing on that planet is worth staying in one location instead of attacking, so presumably the Hive Fleet is going to do everything in its power to get it finished as soon as possible.

 Elbows wrote:
As mentioned, remaining Tyranid organisms in space re-gather the bio-mass (everything just hops into a liquid acid pool bath) by capillary towers...etc.

It is, honestly, why named Tyranid characters don't really make much sense.

Actually they make a lot of sence. I has posed my Swarmlord in a symetrical pose inspiered by Khali the destroyer. (At least the pop cultural representation of her. 4 arms, blue skin, destroys everything, yeah that is her.) The tyranid special characters can be thought of as incarnations. The body is just biomass, it is the entety that gets carried back to the hive mind and then grown in another body. We can asume these special characters take special attension to make or they would be more common. If you see the Matrix they alude that the rogue programs and programs has some form of creative mass that they come from. They talk about returning to the source. This is a lot like tyranids are. I also thik battlestar galactica does the same thing. Although there they do not share one induvidual mind. It is unclear of tyranids can have the same special character being alive at one time. 2 Swarmlords alive at one time? Although old on eye lives for a really long time, it would not be unlikly to asume 2 are existing in the galaxy at the same time.