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I'm working on an idea for playing a smashed Hive Fleet. One that's been destroyed in a major engagement (versus Imperial Guard, Space Wolves, Crimson Fists, Imperial Fists and Blood Angels). The massacre was unfathomable on both sides, but ultimately, the Tyranids were purged from the surfaces of the worlds they'd invaded, and their Hive Ships annihilated by the Imperial Navy. In desperation, the Tyranids clung onto a lunar class cruiser, overwhelmed the crew, and injected an infant Norn Queen into the hold.

Using the power of the Hive mind, the Tyranids did something unthinkable, and the zoanthropes and synaptic link overwhelmed the navigators. The few survivors were compelled by the remaining Tyranids to activate the Gellar Field and Warp Drive, and slipped from the battle fleet through the Tyranids own shadow of the warp.

800 years later, the Lunar Class Cruiser is a part of a huge space hulk in the Fenris system. The Tyranids have been finding other ships and pulling them together to create a huge incubator and armoured casing for a new Hive Ship. With dozens of vessels around its body, the Norn Queen has remembered the near defeat at the hands of the Wolves, and plans on crashing into their homeworld to feast on their rich biomatter.

The fluff seems to be that the Tyranids have had ample time to breed their numbers up, and I'm wanting to pick up Zone Mortalis to represent the interior of the hulk and space ship. Lots of Tervigons and Genestealers and Lictors, and even Tyrant Guard and Zoanthropes acting as blocking forces. The hope I've got is in creating a campaign where the Wolves and their allies have to stop the Nids from reaching Fenris by boarding the hulk, crippling key parts, finding the Norn Queen sleeping inside, and murdering her. But the Genestealers have also been working on a few cults of their own. Bald humans stalk the passageways, clutching assault rifles and operating parts of the ship to keep its engines and thrusters working. Worst of all, similar looking tribes of pallid, hairless humans have been reported on the continents of Fenris, worshipping the six-limbed Wolf. It seems Hive Fleet Yurei has been seeding the ruin of its old adversaries for quite some time. From the stars to the glaciers, the coalition of marine chapters reform to finish off Yurei for good, but the Tyranids are older and wiser, and far more sly in their tactics.

Plausible? I like the idea of some Jaws II revenge Nids who at the brink of extinction are determined to finish off a deadly prey, so they've been stalking them across the galaxy, waiting for a time to annihilate

I like the sound of that!

1. Nids inhabiting hulks are a hallmark of Aliens..er Tyranids yea them. Having them aggregate hulks and bits would not be something far off from that. Who knows maybe thats how hive fleets start, until they are capable of building their own fleets.

2. In older fluff Nids could travel the warp. They wouldn't necessarily need navigators to do that, but its a cool theme.

Sounds like a good theme, but I would take care to not stray too far from the establised fluff. Just to spare yourself from flak and general grief

Thanks for the feedback everybody. Greatly appreciated

While the name is clever (basically Japanese ghosts) I don't really think it fits a Tyranid Fleet.

For example, Behemoth is biblical/Jewish religious figure destroyed by God during the time of creation, and is commonly associated with large, brutish animals like hippos, water buffalo and elephants, which is related to how Behemoth was the first Nid fleet, wiped out in the beginning of the Tyrannic Wars, and was basically a smash-and-grab(the biomass) kinda strategy.

Kraken is a mythological sea monster analogous to a giant octopus, with many tentacles, kinda how Kraken spread splinter fleets over a large area.


Leviathan is a religious beast related to Behemoth, with many connotations depending on source (this wikipedia page really shows how much though the writers put into the name of the Tyranid fleets, or at least, the big 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan) but in short, associated with the end times, is a crown prince of Hell in Lavey Satanism, is a prince of hell in various sources, etc, which is really poignant as HFL is the most deadly so far and looks to be the end of Humanity as it steamrolls towards Terra.


In short, I think the name is unique but not in keeping with the other Hive Fleets (who all follow the names of Biblical-level monsters or greek myth monsters such as Kraken, Hydra, Gorgon, etc), with the exception of Jormungandr who is a world devouring snake in Norse (accurate, really)

What your describing sounds very similar to how genestealer cults operate, but on a more extreme level, which is good. It takes an existing behavior and adapts it to fit the situation, a perfect illustration of the Tyranid's nature.