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.

So I've had an idea, it's mostly just a musing about a possibility and I'm not even sure I fully believe it but I thought I would share it non the less. What if the the Tyranids had been to the galaxy before but where driven off by the Necrons?

There was a time period when the Necrons had pretty much harvested the galaxy dry with only a few pockets of life remaining. Well what if a Hive Fleet of the Tyranids entered the galaxy at this time and was mostly destroyed by the Necrons. This could be a reason as to why Necron machines resemble insectoid creatures as it says they where modeled off of ancient predators. It could also explain why Tyranids for the most part avoid conflicts with Necrons, if the Necrons defeated and harvested the majority of the Hive Fleet then the Hive Mind would have learned from this. and maybe learned to be weary of the Necrons.

It could also explain why there are life forms scattered throughout the galaxy that are believed to be remnants of ancient Hive Fleets which have reverted to their natural animilistic ways (Kraken on Fenris and Catachan Devils on Catachan). And if the galaxy was so devoid of life at that time maybe it wasen't worth it for the Hive Mind to send more fleets because there just wasen't anything to harvest and so like the Necrons it waited untill the galaxy was populated again before returning.

And the Tyranids may not have been noticed because of the state of the galaxy at that time. If my memory is right humans wern't fully evolved at that time, Orks woulden't care beings as they don't really keep history or actually care about it. In fact they probably don't even know what it is. And the Eldar would be so few in numbers that they woulden't be able to monitor the whole galaxy to know what was going on (remember this was before the Eldar became a dominant power in the galaxy and then lost it all).

Man that was alot ok there it is.

The idea isn't bad.
Just wait a bit and GW will copy-paste it...

Eldar would know of the tyranids but tell no one as usual.
Did they share the warning of the menace of the C'tan with anyone?

Exactly. Always keeping secrets because all non-Eldar are "lesser races"......

Yeah I just thought it was maybe a neat explenation to a couple things

1hadhq wrote:Just wait a bit and GW will copy-paste it...

LOL they probably will because this is such good fluff

It's good to know that at least so far people think the idea is at least plausible lol

First thought that comes to mind is that the Tyranids would not wait as the life that now exists is the result of the reorganization of bio matter that was there before. Circle of life stuff dirt>plant>herbavore>death somehow and decomposition into dirt again eventually. I will say that there is photosynthesis so energy would have been used for the purposes of converting that biomatter, but i dont think that would produce more matter.

So in short, the nids would have had no reason to wait and then come back. bio matter is relatively constant and the nids would keep coming till they died.

as to the question about why different planets have nid like fauna, I have always seen this as scouting forces gone native. Scouting forces that did their part by... scouting and signaling back to the main fleets that there was plenty of grub here. Once their function was complete they were cut off or left to their own devices, waiting until they will be reabsorbed when the fleets came.

So you say they would keep coming because there would always be some sort of biomass but then you say they would need scouting parties to determine if there is enough bio matter to go to a certain area?

That's kind of contradictory isn't it?

I personally love the idea of Catachan Devils being a Tyranid organism, but I'm biased because I want to have some supporting fluff to add them to the Nid Army I'm planning to build.

I've read a lot of threads on this and other forums, and I can across this post yesterday on Tauonline.org forums:

Wargamer wrote:
We have discussed this at length already...

The only "scout ships" tyranids use are mycetic spores carrying Lictors and Genestealers, or Kraken Vanguard.

Spores are launched, galactically speaking, at close range. Thus for the Spore Attack to be viable, it would have to come from Leviathan, which arrived in 997M41. As we have stated, the Devil is far older than that.

Secondly, Kraken Vanguards either operate as a close-range guide (eg: fills the role of the Lictor/Genestealer), or as part of a Splinter Fleet. Either way, the planet is getting devoured without major military support.
Considering that the Tyranids would need to have seeded the world pre-Imperium (before M30) to make this viable, we must consider it null void. There is no evidence to support this "Devil is a Tyranid" theory, save the rantings of total bloody morons (in and out of the Codex).

I don't know enough about Nid fluff to confirm what Wargamer posted, but if it's true IMO it rules out the "scout fleet" theory.

If you eliminate the "scout fleet" theory, then Warboss Imbad Ironskull's theory seems like a plausible theory

UrbanCowboy wrote:
First thought that comes to mind is that the Tyranids would not wait as the life that now exists is the result of the reorganization of bio matter that was there before. Circle of life stuff dirt>plant>herbavore>death somehow and decomposition into dirt again eventually. I will say that there is photosynthesis so energy would have been used for the purposes of converting that biomatter, but i dont think that would produce more matter.

So in short, the nids would have had no reason to wait and then come back. bio matter is relatively constant and the nids would keep coming till they died.

I see your point, but if the Nids had got the butts handed to them by the Necron, why would they they go back into a hostile region for minimal biomass. IMO they would wait until they were sure the Necron weren't around.

So it's not so much a point of available biomass, but the threat of the Necron.

Just my two cents, for what they're worth.

nice stuff! keep it coming

Yeah the fluff idea is good, and i can acually see GW using it However, would the tyranids even bother to fight the necron? As far is i know nids need biomass and necrons don't have biomass because they're made of metal, so would the tyranids even benefit from a war against necrons?

Ah but it's a conflict of resources. True the Tyranids can harvest biomass froma planet itself but a good portion of their bio-mass diet is living beings, the Necrons harvest the life force from those beings causing them to decay and such.

And even if the Tyranids had no reason to fight the Necrons the Necrons themselves would have every reason to seek out conflict with the Tyranids as the Tyranids would be the locust destroying their crops AND as living creatures the Tyranids life essence can be harvested by the Necrons.

I like this idea.The long gap between the tyranid incursions could be explained that they were forced back by the necrons and moved to another galaxy instead. Now they're back for a second try.

Or that the galaxy/galaxies they are currently invading the 40k galaxy from was still abundant with life at that time and so it was more cost effective to finish off those galaxies before moving on to the 40k galaxy after the first fleet was destroyed and had reported the lack of life.

Well its an alright idea, but there are some definite holes:

Tyranids and Necrons don't fight because Tyranids invade planets for bio-resources, which the necrons do not provide. Similarly, necrons do not feed so much on general life as the souls of life forms, (i.e. why they harvest sapient creatures rather than just plant a bunch of crops like the rest of us ) and individual tyranid creatures don't have souls, so killing them doesn't benefit the necrons.

As for the 'wild' tyranid organisms, there are several logical problems for them being left over from really ancient hive fleets. In your theory the necrons had already harvested most of the galaxy, meaning the tyranids would only have a few planets to harvest for themselves. Presumably the feral tyranids would have been left on these planets, but the problem is the necrons would have driven the nids off these planets. Either the nids would take all their biomorphs with them or the necrons would wipe them out, but either way none would be left. And if the feral nids were on a planet that got razed by the 'nids, they again would have been collected by the hive fleet to go to other planets. Or, even if they managed to stay on an already scoured planet, they wouldn't have any food to eat for at least many thousands of years.

The quote from tauonline doesn't really make any sense; there isn't any indication that the tyranids are limited to close range spores for scouting. Considering the considerable biomass needed to sustain a hivefleet, it would be ridiculous for the nids to spend the countless years between galaxies only to find their intended target doesn't have the resources to support them. To be as successful as they are, they would have to have advanced scout organisms. This is the best explanation for the catchan devil, leviathan, etc. However it does point out another problem in the theory. Since the tyranids almost certainly have advanced scout organisms, it is unlikely they would've encountered the necrons after their harvest of the galaxy; coming to our galaxy at such a low point in biodiversity would've been really foolish for them.

Finally, if the tyranids indeed have encountered the necrons before and were driven off by them, why would they return now? The hive mind is intelligent enough to have noticed that the necrons are functionally immortal, so their numbers have obviously not significantly decreased since their last encounter. It also would likely have noticed that the necrons are harvesters like the nids, so even if the hive fleet had grown powerful enough to oust the necrons since their last encounter there isn't really a good reason for them to think this galaxy has enough biomass unharvested by the necrons to make the invasion worth it.

I would quote all of that and provide individual answers but I'm being lazy right now

But most of that has already been addressed.

Your theory has just about as many holes as the official story, as Glyslain pointed out, and I see little that can be explained by this that the official story can't.

Why not use the official?

Nids hate necros for the reason that necrons have no biomass to harvest.
The hive mind doesn't want to waste irreclaimable biomass destroying things that can't be harvested.
Necron's guns completely destroy atoms, jsyk.
Easy as that.

Why did this thread even start again?