Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I have read the Tyranid fluff many times (excluding the 5th edition). every battle the Tyranid have costs millions of creatures.
Obviously they are replaced effortlessly if the planet is won. Though when new Tyranid are created are new souls created or is it the same sould as before?
I know they keep the intelligence of the battle they were killed in, especially the Swarmlord from what I have heard. Opinions? Theories/answers?

Well they are effected by psychic powers so they have souls.

As I understand it, Tyranids are soulless. If you look at the relationship Tyranids have with Necrons, you understand this: Necrons avoid Tyranids because they have no souls to harvest, and Tyranids avoid Necrons because they (Necrons) have no biomass.

The concept of a soul, even in a Warp presence sense, is highly suspect when applied to the Tyranids.

Tyranids are clearly sentient, intelligent etc, but not in the same way as a human or an Eldar. I suspect the same logic applies to whatever analogue they have to the "souls" possessed by humans, Eldar etc.

Being soulless would make sense as to why they cannot be corrupted by chaos. But then the fact that some have connection to the warp is confusing.

If you're referring to the Tyranids' psychic powers, I can understand where you're coming from. If you look in the 5th edition codex under the list of Tyranid psychic powers, it explains that all the Tyranid psy-powers are derived from the Hive Mind, kind of like the Waaagh(!) energies of the Orks are derived from the Orks' psyche. For gameplay purposes, you still roll psychic tests, and can still suffer 'perils of the warp' attacks. The codex explains this as the Tyranid 'psyker' delving too deeply into the Hive Mind and having its mind overwhelmed. Their powers are not derived from the warp. The 'Shadow in the Warp' is the overpowering presence of the collective Tyranid consciousness drowning out the warp. How this works? Beats me...

Do animals have souls?

Oops, I might have offended someone with that. Never mind me.

Maybe I'm just a noob because I've only read the 5th Edition Codex and I've got 60 points of Nid's so far... I really don't think that Tyranids have souls. Sure, every creature has some form of sentience, going from the mighty Swarmlord down to the lowly Ripper. All of them were spawned by the Hive Mind. The way I interpret it is that all of the creatures simply act as part of the Hive Mind's body, which manifests itself in the Tyranids. Like any functional body, there are unique parts that serve specific purposes.

@ Justus
It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that the Hive Mind represents not only the collective Tyranid consciousness, but also its immortal soul.

@ Undivided
Most species of animals do not have collective psychic consciouses, and are not capable of migrating from planet to planet, eating everything in their path.

How about ants, to a lesser extent?

I would imagine that the Hive Mind would count as a Tyranids soul. As each Tyranid is just a piece of the larger creature, all working together.

They are not soulless in the same way that Pariahs/Blanks are for example.

As a side note: Necrons, more specifically C'tan, feed on energy. This includes, but is not limited to, souls.

@ Medium
Blanks aren't soulless, they just don't have a warp signature, like Tau. I can't say anything about Pariahs, I don't have a Necron codex. Also, souls are tasty.

@ Undivided
Ants... Don't really know much about them, except that they probably don't travel to other planets, eating all the biomass there, and moving on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ Medium
Blanks aren't soulless, they just don't have a warp signature, like Tau. I can't say anything about Pariahs, I don't have a Necron codex. Also, souls are tasty.

@ Undivided
Ants... Don't really know much about them, except that they probably don't travel to other planets, eating all the biomass there, and moving on.

Gus_Papas wrote:@ Medium
Blanks aren't soulless, they just don't have a warp signature, like Tau. I can't say anything about Pariahs, I don't have a Necron codex. Also, souls are tasty.

@ Undivided
Ants... Don't really know much about them, except that they probably don't travel to other planets, eating all the biomass there, and moving on.

As far as I understand it, whereas blanks have no warp presence, Pariah have sort of a reverse warp aura around them making it painful for psykers to be near them and uncomfortable for normal people. I think they'd still have souls, just have a cursed gene that makes them hurt other nearby souls.

A single brain cell doesn't have a presence in the warp, but the power of an entire brain does. A single tyranid has no soul, but the collective power of their small brains creates a psychic pooling we call the hive mind. The best to describe is being every and nowhere.

Psynapse creatures have more brain power, enough to create a "shard" of a soul, which in some cases is preserved individually by the hive mind.

soulless beings are unaffected by psychic powers, tyranids are not, so therefore have a soul (whether it is a soul per tyranid, or a part of a single hive mind soul)

so when a 'nid is regrown (like they always are) do they get new souls or do they keep the original? and another question. If a gaunt is killed then is turned into bio-mass..... does it get turned back into a gaunt or can it become part of a carnifex?

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Culexus_Assassin

Considered soulless and is described as a blank.

Pariahs are essentially Blanks meshed with Necron tech.

BluntmanDC wrote:soulless beings are unaffected by psychic powers

Cite an official source please.

Considering most psychic attacks don't attack a beings soul they attack it's body I doubt that this is true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ultramarines Chief Librarian Tigurius
Tyranids 4th edition page 29

"As I looked into its dead black eyes, I saw the terrible sentience it had in place of a soul. Behind that was the steel will of its leader. Further still I could feel its primogenitor coldly assessing me from the void. And looking back from the furthest recesses of the aliens mind...I can only describe as an immortal huner. It is this we cannot kill."

The way I understand it, the Tyranid 'race' has one gigantic, collective soul.

Because the Hive Mind isn't a creature, the Hive Mind is the amalgamation of the minds of all sentient Tyranids in existence.

They're quite literally one galaxy spanning creature, an 'individual' Tyranid is nothing more than a cell in a body.

Gus_Papas wrote:If you're referring to the Tyranids' psychic powers, I can understand where you're coming from. If you look in the 5th edition codex under the list of Tyranid psychic powers, it explains that all the Tyranid psy-powers are derived from the Hive Mind, kind of like the Waaagh(!) energies of the Orks are derived from the Orks' psyche. For gameplay purposes, you still roll psychic tests, and can still suffer 'perils of the warp' attacks. The codex explains this as the Tyranid 'psyker' delving too deeply into the Hive Mind and having its mind overwhelmed. Their powers are not derived from the warp. The 'Shadow in the Warp' is the overpowering presence of the collective Tyranid consciousness drowning out the warp. How this works? Beats me...

This is a popular misconception. Both Orks and Tyranids do use the Warp - it is just in a completely different manner to the way in which humans, Eldar etc do so. I would liken it to humans, Eldar etc touching the Warp through their "souls" (or Warp-presence/Warp-self), where as the Orks and Tyranids have a different relationship with the Warp dimension, but can still "touch" it, so to speak. In much the same way that a Warp drive can open a gateway to the Warp but a Warp engine doesn't have a "soul".

The mechanicum would argue with that point.

Nitros14 wrote:The way I understand it, the Tyranid 'race' has one gigantic, collective soul.

Because the Hive Mind isn't a creature, the Hive Mind is the amalgamation of the minds of all sentient Tyranids in existence.

They're quite literally one galaxy spanning creature, an 'individual' Tyranid is nothing more than a cell in a body.

This is pretty much spot on.

Ever wonder why the Tyranid control system is called 'Synapse'? The name for the thing that lets your neurons communicate with one another and everything else in your body? Because individual tyranids are the cells of some vast organism.

You could argue that 'gaunts and such don't have souls because they're the Tyranid equivalent of skin cells. The actual skin cells of a human psyker probably don't have individual souls either, but that's not a distinction you'd normally make.



And on a pointless, off-topic aside - 'gaunts are more like white blood cells than skin cells, TBH. White blood cells can't reproduce by themselves (they're produced by bone marrow) and they live for about a week on average, just like our stomachless, vat grown 'gaunts! Plus white blood cells are divided into different types to fight different enemies. However your body is totally cheesy and mostly uses Neutrophil because they cost like 4pts each and the local meta consists of bacteria which they're super-OP against. Your body doesn't care about the fluff at all!

Ok I'm done.

Rube wrote:

Nitros14 wrote:The way I understand it, the Tyranid 'race' has one gigantic, collective soul.

Because the Hive Mind isn't a creature, the Hive Mind is the amalgamation of the minds of all sentient Tyranids in existence.

They're quite literally one galaxy spanning creature, an 'individual' Tyranid is nothing more than a cell in a body.

This is pretty much spot on.

Ever wonder why the Tyranid control system is called 'Synapse'? The name for the thing that lets your neurons communicate with one another and everything else in your body? Because individual tyranids are the cells of some vast organism.

You could argue that 'gaunts and such don't have souls because they're the Tyranid equivalent of skin cells. The actual skin cells of a human psyker probably don't have individual souls either, but that's not a distinction you'd normally make.



And on a pointless, off-topic aside - 'gaunts are more like white blood cells than skin cells, TBH. White blood cells can't reproduce by themselves (they're produced by bone marrow) and they live for about a week on average, just like our stomachless, vat grown 'gaunts! Plus white blood cells are divided into different types to fight different enemies. However your body is totally cheesy and mostly uses Neutrophil because they cost like 4pts each and the local meta consists of bacteria which they're super-OP against. Your body doesn't care about the fluff at all!

Ok I'm done.

Well you have good points, but im not so sure cells are a good comparison. They don't act on their own they don't even move all that much, their ability to work is based on osmosis. (I think is the correct term)

Gaunts however while you could say they don't work on their own either get jobs done differently. They move, have brains, kill the target that the hive mind wants them to in whatever way they want. They have a small iota of free will, but not enough to act structured without the hive mind.

They are told to kill a guardsmen than they can choose how, put simply.

I'm not sure a hormagaunt has much choice in how it kills. It has giant scythes for hands. The hormagaunt who looked down at hands that would make Baraka feel inadequate and decided to kill by slapping his tail at enemies instead rides the short bus to the brooding vat. :/

But yeah, Tyranids aren't literally identical to cells. They have their 'Instinctive Behaviour' stuff, so they must have brains. Maybe they have souls, joined together into some collective gestalt like the Orks. Maybe just the overtly psychic 'nids do, like Zoanthropes and Norn Queens. Maybe only the Norn Queens do, and even Zoanthropes are just soulless conduits.

BluntmanDC wrote:Well they are effected by psychic powers so they have souls.

A rock can be effected by psychic powers, does a rock have a soul?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rube wrote:But yeah, Tyranids aren't literally identical to cells. They have their 'Instinctive Behaviour' stuff, so they must have brains. Maybe they have souls, joined together into some collective gestalt like the Orks.

Orks have individual souls. The gestalt psychic field of the Orks is described as a sort of static or murmur in the warp, which gets louder as more Orks gather, causing Orks to become more confident and allowing Weirdboyz to become more powerful.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:

BluntmanDC wrote:soulless beings are unaffected by psychic powers

Cite an official source please.

Eisenhorn Trilogy

That's actually a misnomer. When they say "soulless", it is merely a petty appellation to describe Blanks, which DO have a soul-- it's sort of a "negative" soul, and can be stronger or weaker depending on the person's luck and training, just like with psykers.

Soulless beings are just objects to be messed around with. Actual "soulless" are anti-psykers.

They cant have souls since they cant get corrupted by chaos. Necrons stay away because they harvest souls and tyranids dont have any. I have all three of the codexes

Khorne Flakes wrote:They cant have souls since they cant get corrupted by chaos.

Just because they don't have souls doesn't mean that they can't be corrupted by chaos. A sword does not have a soul, yet it can be corrupted by chaos and possessed by a daemon.

Also, Tyranids have been corrupted by Chaos before.

@: Khorne Flakes: I always thought the Tyranids avoided the Necrons out of some sort of fear myself or advanced technological means.

@Melissia: Corrupted is not the same thing as tainted. The Tyranids just like everyone has been infected with Nurgles Rot. That does not mean they serve chaos which is what is being referanced when people say corrupted.