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 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Formosa wrote:


The warp is a multi dimentional scape, so are the chaos gods, the best you can do is shut them out of the 40k universe, they cannot be killed in the conventional meaning, you can starve them out of the 40k universe that would just kill that aspect of them, they are also not limited to the milky way, they are everywhere in the universe.

So IF the nids kill off all life in the milky way, so what, plenty of other universes and galaxies to exploit.

Very interesting. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that victory in the milky way is assured for them. The promary weak point the Gods have is that they need mortals to be able to affect the world. To be able to breach through into our universe. Without mortal minds they're powerless here.

Agreed that they have functionally limitless power as any good lovecraftian entity should, but their ability to exercise that power is limited.

White Dwarf 145 by Andy Chambers and Jervis Johnson
The Tyranid hive mind hungers for fresh genetic material, gene-stocks that can be used to create new bio-construct creatures and organic machine-slaves. Their own galaxy is exhausted, its creatures long since absorbed into the hive mind, their flesh turned to unfathomable purposes or discarded as useless. With its billions of humans and countless other creatures the Imperium offers the Tyranids an almost inexhaustible stock of flesh and genes which will invigorate the hive mind and enable it to embody itself in new forms.

Humanity will be absorbed, broken into strands of DNA to be used to create a new generation of bio-technology. It will be the death of the human race, but to the Tyranid hive mind this is of no more consequence than the mining of ores or the harvesting of crops. For the Tyranids have no sense of pity or compassion, they are as utterly beyond human understanding as humans are beyond their comprehension. To them man is just an inefficient and primitive lifeform, something to be consumed and turned to a higher purpose. Such has been the fate of a thousand galaxies, of millions of intelligent species, since time immemorial.

Interesting. I've emphasised the point that i think is interesting. The notion that the Imperium offers almost limitless supply of biomass compared to their native galaxy implies that the other galaxies they have consumed have been much smaller.

It's these possibilities. The chance that the Tyranids might actually be beatable, and that even though Chaos' power is limited its ability to influence the world most certainly isn't, is what gives the faintest glimmer of hope that is what makes the grimdark not become cloying for some people.

Is it likely humanity will beat either of these two let alone both? Hell no.

Might it just, faintly, be possible? Maybe...

it seems that the ability to influence the mortal realm isnt limited at all, its more a factor of will, every instance a Chaos god has wanted to, it/they have literally torn a hole in reality and flooded the mortal plain with deamons.

as an alternative, it could also be connected to the power of the gods themselves, it may take a lot of energy to rip open these rifts and thus weaken them against the others, either way its interesting to think about.

 Formosa wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Formosa wrote:


The warp is a multi dimentional scape, so are the chaos gods, the best you can do is shut them out of the 40k universe, they cannot be killed in the conventional meaning, you can starve them out of the 40k universe that would just kill that aspect of them, they are also not limited to the milky way, they are everywhere in the universe.

So IF the nids kill off all life in the milky way, so what, plenty of other universes and galaxies to exploit.

Very interesting. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that victory in the milky way is assured for them. The promary weak point the Gods have is that they need mortals to be able to affect the world. To be able to breach through into our universe. Without mortal minds they're powerless here.

Agreed that they have functionally limitless power as any good lovecraftian entity should, but their ability to exercise that power is limited.

White Dwarf 145 by Andy Chambers and Jervis Johnson
The Tyranid hive mind hungers for fresh genetic material, gene-stocks that can be used to create new bio-construct creatures and organic machine-slaves. Their own galaxy is exhausted, its creatures long since absorbed into the hive mind, their flesh turned to unfathomable purposes or discarded as useless. With its billions of humans and countless other creatures the Imperium offers the Tyranids an almost inexhaustible stock of flesh and genes which will invigorate the hive mind and enable it to embody itself in new forms.

Humanity will be absorbed, broken into strands of DNA to be used to create a new generation of bio-technology. It will be the death of the human race, but to the Tyranid hive mind this is of no more consequence than the mining of ores or the harvesting of crops. For the Tyranids have no sense of pity or compassion, they are as utterly beyond human understanding as humans are beyond their comprehension. To them man is just an inefficient and primitive lifeform, something to be consumed and turned to a higher purpose. Such has been the fate of a thousand galaxies, of millions of intelligent species, since time immemorial.

Interesting. I've emphasised the point that i think is interesting. The notion that the Imperium offers almost limitless supply of biomass compared to their native galaxy implies that the other galaxies they have consumed have been much smaller.

It's these possibilities. The chance that the Tyranids might actually be beatable, and that even though Chaos' power is limited its ability to influence the world most certainly isn't, is what gives the faintest glimmer of hope that is what makes the grimdark not become cloying for some people.

Is it likely humanity will beat either of these two let alone both? Hell no.

Might it just, faintly, be possible? Maybe...

it seems that the ability to influence the mortal realm isnt limited at all, its more a factor of will, every instance a Chaos god has wanted to, it/they have literally torn a hole in reality and flooded the mortal plain with deamons.

as an alternative, it could also be connected to the power of the gods themselves, it may take a lot of energy to rip open these rifts and thus weaken them against the others, either way its interesting to think about.

My understanding of it was that the Gods are completely unable to influence the materium without a doorway in, provided by mortal minds. Otherwise why would they need to bother about possessions and corrupting mortals and suchlike.

As an example, the Gods were utterly powerless to break out of the Eye (itself only a warp-tear because the eldar offered the route through) until Abaddon provided the means to do so.

Each and every warp outbreak has a heretic opening their mind to the warp at its epicentre. From then they're free to spill out into the universe until they reach another barrier, but for that initial doorway they need a mortal to seduce and use as a gateway.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Formosa wrote:


The warp is a multi dimentional scape, so are the chaos gods, the best you can do is shut them out of the 40k universe, they cannot be killed in the conventional meaning, you can starve them out of the 40k universe that would just kill that aspect of them, they are also not limited to the milky way, they are everywhere in the universe.

So IF the nids kill off all life in the milky way, so what, plenty of other universes and galaxies to exploit.

Very interesting. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that victory in the milky way is assured for them. The promary weak point the Gods have is that they need mortals to be able to affect the world. To be able to breach through into our universe. Without mortal minds they're powerless here.

Agreed that they have functionally limitless power as any good lovecraftian entity should, but their ability to exercise that power is limited.

White Dwarf 145 by Andy Chambers and Jervis Johnson
The Tyranid hive mind hungers for fresh genetic material, gene-stocks that can be used to create new bio-construct creatures and organic machine-slaves. Their own galaxy is exhausted, its creatures long since absorbed into the hive mind, their flesh turned to unfathomable purposes or discarded as useless. With its billions of humans and countless other creatures the Imperium offers the Tyranids an almost inexhaustible stock of flesh and genes which will invigorate the hive mind and enable it to embody itself in new forms.

Humanity will be absorbed, broken into strands of DNA to be used to create a new generation of bio-technology. It will be the death of the human race, but to the Tyranid hive mind this is of no more consequence than the mining of ores or the harvesting of crops. For the Tyranids have no sense of pity or compassion, they are as utterly beyond human understanding as humans are beyond their comprehension. To them man is just an inefficient and primitive lifeform, something to be consumed and turned to a higher purpose. Such has been the fate of a thousand galaxies, of millions of intelligent species, since time immemorial.

Interesting. I've emphasised the point that i think is interesting. The notion that the Imperium offers almost limitless supply of biomass compared to their native galaxy implies that the other galaxies they have consumed have been much smaller.

It's these possibilities. The chance that the Tyranids might actually be beatable, and that even though Chaos' power is limited its ability to influence the world most certainly isn't, is what gives the faintest glimmer of hope that is what makes the grimdark not become cloying for some people.

Is it likely humanity will beat either of these two let alone both? Hell no.

Might it just, faintly, be possible? Maybe...

it seems that the ability to influence the mortal realm isnt limited at all, its more a factor of will, every instance a Chaos god has wanted to, it/they have literally torn a hole in reality and flooded the mortal plain with deamons.

as an alternative, it could also be connected to the power of the gods themselves, it may take a lot of energy to rip open these rifts and thus weaken them against the others, either way its interesting to think about.

My understanding of it was that the Gods are completely unable to influence the materium without a doorway in, provided by mortal minds. Otherwise why would they need to bother about possessions and corrupting mortals and suchlike.

As an example, the Gods were utterly powerless to break out of the Eye (itself only a warp-tear because the eldar offered the route through) until Abaddon provided the means to do so.

Each and every warp outbreak has a heretic opening their mind to the warp at its epicentre. From then they're free to spill out into the universe until they reach another barrier, but for that initial doorway they need a mortal to seduce and use as a gateway.

I dont disagree, I dont think the gods can enter the mortal world either, but they can force Deamons into it, which is a part of them anyway, when it comes to influences on the mortal world they absolutely can and do influence it all the time, the most famous incident is nicking the Primarchs from The Emperor, that one was very overt, but low level influence and general warp buggery is part and parcel to them.

Interestingly the new black legion book kind of makes it clear that Abbadon isnt working for the gods, they want and need him to win the great game, he has no interest in them other than as tools, but all chaos aligned people think that until ....

 Nerak wrote:
Orcs and Tyranids are the only beings in 40k that's confimed to live outside the milky way. During probing of other galaxies the mechanicus recieved ork signatures wherever they looked, so there's that. The Tyranids whole shtick is that they're from beyond our galaxy, so there's that as well.

Nids are fleeing from an intergalactic WAAAGH! confirmed.

 KommissarKiln wrote:

 Nerak wrote:
Orcs and Tyranids are the only beings in 40k that's confimed to live outside the milky way. During probing of other galaxies the mechanicus recieved ork signatures wherever they looked, so there's that. The Tyranids whole shtick is that they're from beyond our galaxy, so there's that as well.

Nids are fleeing from an intergalactic WAAAGH! confirmed.

Ork and Tyranids and Chaos, that we know of

Crons could easily have left the milky way, some humans too, any of the races apart from Tau pretty much could have left the milky way.

Imperial: warp jump accident, end up in another galaxy.

Crons: woke up early decided to explore another galaxy and off it went, its in the realms of possibility.

Eldar: found a webway that extended out of the milky way, investigated it and it broke down, stranding them, again its possible (not likely).

All sorts of cool stuff could happen, its a big universe

Something to think about is resource availability. The vast majority of planets are not suitable for life--looking at modern science it's plausible galaxies are the same way. Also note that for the vast majority of the history of life on earth things were strictly microscopic. Of all the galaxies out there, only a fraction could be capable of sustaining life, of which only a fraction have gone through abiogenesis to actually have life, of which only a fraction actually have a strong development of biomass, of which only a fraction have widespread advanced civilizations like 40k's milky way that multiply that biomass to significant levels through population and terraforming. Its very plausible that the milky way is effectively a massive gold mine to Tyranids and they are swarming to it like flies on poo.

The oldcron codex implies that they were multigalactic, and Nightbringer confirms it. It's possible that they have 'ruined' many of the local galaxies, leaving the Milky Way unexpectedly rich for the Tyranids.

Necrons would be the last. After the Imperium would have fought enough with Chaos, Tyranids, Eldar, Orks, e.t.c., all forces would end up being weak, while the Necrons would be secretly awakening newly discovered Tomb Worlds and gaining more power day by day. Plus, they have shards and crazy technology already.
So they would launch their final attack, destroy everything that lives and restore their empire to its former glory. After that, they would all lose purpose in life, except the higher ranked Necrons who would lead the rest to new goals, or they would all agree to commit suicide and let there be life once again in the universe, or they would fight till no Necron is alive anymore (after all, I don't think their hatred would suddenly go away because they completed their goal, except if most of them are counted as total computers that stop executing a program after they get the correct results, in which case they will have to be shutdown).
So, there is a 2/3 chance that the universe will have life again, even if the Necrons are the last survivors.

But the thing with Necrons is that there are also the Flayed ones, which means that all the Necrons might get infected before gathering enough power and fail their task. And if they kill every other race, they would still have the Flayed ones roaming around and infecting other Necrons, so they have to face their own battle brothers

Finally, what if a C'tan fully awakened due to a malfunction of a Necron artifact??? The C'tan as shards are already too powerful and if even one of them was unleashed, he could possibly release his brother Star Gods and start wreaking havoc.

And these are possibilities for just one race... I got to say that I love the writing in Warhammer. This sense of mystery is great!