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It's been made canon that the nids were in the galaxy a long time before 40,000. Obviously they didn't eat it all or even make that big an impression as they weren't remembered.

The kraken egg in the spacewolf fortress was revealed to be a tyranid egg, which hatched eventually, much to the consternation of the inhabitants of the fang.

It's been said that the catachan devil is a tyranid creature. Catachan seems to not be stripped to bare airless rock so we can assume the nids didn't have their way with it. (Maybe all those barking toads drove them away. )

So since tyranids were in the galaxy apparently long before the imperium, or even before man took to the stars, what stopped them from cleaning the place out? Some of the functioning necrons in the galaxy stamped on a lone fragment of a hive fleet before it got established and reproducing? The eldar actually did some good for once? It ran into the earlier, more powerful krork remnants?

Maybe - or maybe it wasn't a full scale invasion, maybe the remnants are the results of a first few tentative pushes into the galaxy to test the waters. Some abortive approaches before later settling on Lictors and Genestealers as more effective, perhaps.

It's not canon.

It's what some Imperial Tech-Priests speculate might have happened. In universe opinions are not necessarily correct.

Essentially the theory is that Tyranids have likely send out vast numbers of scouts into the universe. These scouts are designed to test a galaxy for potential attention from the Swarm.

There's theories that some have gone dormant and others have "gone native" over the millennia.



I think the reason we don't see them swarming is because they aren't built too. They are designed to scout and investigate and in some form report back. Basic reproduction appears to be a function to likely allow them to continue local operations.


That said its sketchy and it doesn't seem that they called the Tyranids. It could be Imperial scientists getting it wrong - most Tyranid lore is written from other (mostly Imperial) impressions of them not by the Tyranids themselves. It could be that the scouts went wrong and whilst they penetrated the galaxy they somehow failed to setup beacons or calls or even judged the Galaxy at that time (we don't know when they entered) too dangerous or not full of enough food to be worth paying attention too and the scout drones were then cut loose and abandoned.


There are many potential theories, we don't even fully know why the Tyranids are here. We know they feed and we know that the Emperor seems to act like a powerful beacon to them (moth to light); but beyond that we really have no idea of their game plan. All we know is they eat and consume and appear capable of intelligent military plans - hence why most of their Hive Fleets aren't just striking blind, but making for specific targets such as Marine Home Worlds. There's also a huge planet sized construct they are building for purposes beyond our understanding.

The egg and devils are simply the leftovers of scouts which didn't find sufficient signs of life to draw in a fullscale Tyranid presence.

Then when Pharos got blown, the Hive Mind went 'Ooop. Haven't really heard back from the first lot of scouts yet, but that's clearly of interest. Best send some bigger bugs'. So the Ymgarl Stealers and Zoats were dispatched.

 Ketara wrote:
So the Ymgarl Stealers and Zoats were dispatched.

Zoats aren't tyranids, they were always (far as I recall) "allies" of the first proper tyranid wave. I think the concept of allies has perhaps shifted and now we are unsure if they were allies or infested rather like genestealers infest humans. But then we are going back into really old lore that has chopped and changed and evolved a fair bit since then.

 Overread wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
So the Ymgarl Stealers and Zoats were dispatched.

Zoats aren't tyranids, they were always (far as I recall) "allies" of the first proper tyranid wave. I think the concept of allies has perhaps shifted and now we are unsure if they were allies or infested rather like genestealers infest humans. But then we are going back into really old lore that has chopped and changed and evolved a fair bit since then.

Current lore has them as vanguards of the Tyranid fleet and bio-organisms created by them. Not allies.

Isn’t it cannon that it was the birth of slaneesh that triggered the nids senses and directed them towards “our” galaxy. Bearings in mind many of the things we see the jugs do I think it’s perfectly reasonable that they send out scouts that will establish creature colonies on Viable worlds. They are definitely controlled by a great intelligence And I expect GW will eventually great a silent king type hive mind character for nids.

I think these parts of the fluff ar best left unsaid. There has been so much rewriting of the fluff over the years. Half baked ideas and loose threads not planed top down. So wheb yiu go bottom up it just turns out weard. Ymgal genestealers come to mind.

It was later admitted the genestealers were first encounter at Ymgarl and mistaken for a native life form.

Only when other tyranids were encountered were they connected to them.

I know i read that the kraken egg in the fang was proven to be tyranid.

It is not implausible that some amount of Tyranids could have been scattered back in time by the Warp. Catachan devils are unlikely to be Tyranid creatures, it is an in-universe theory with no actual backing beyond 'Tyranids are nasty bugs and the devil is a nasty bug' so I don't think it is meant to be taken seriously. We know canonically that the Tyranids set out for the Milky Way due to the Pharos Beacon incident, which was during the Horus Heresy.

I think it is safe to assume all the old fluff about Zoats is ret-conned. I would just go by 8th or newer, which boils down to 'we don't know.' However unsatisfying that may be.

mrFickle wrote:
Isn’t it cannon that it was the birth of slaneesh that triggered the nids senses and directed them towards “our” galaxy. .

Nope. Roboute mucking about with the necron beacon at Pharos is now the probable cause.


---
Though one of the Cain novels has tyranid creatures on ice for millions of years, so who even knows.

It's possible the Tyranids DID wipe everything out.

The Nids might very well be a Mass Effect style galactic purging reset system. They sweep through a galactic disk that draws their attention, wipes everything out that provides any semblance of psychic energy to draw their attention and their entire world in the process, and then retreats to the dark between the stars leaving behind scraps of bio mater and old tyranid genetic material.

The old ones, the necrons, the war in heaven etc... that could all be what evolved and rose back up in the galaxy after the last purge by the nids.

Since I haven't read the HH novel in question: How exactly was the Pharos device tied to the Nid swarms in the actual text? Was there some sort of epilogue in the vein of "Somewhere, in the dark corners of the universe, a gargantuan hungry presence focuses its attention upon the Milky Way and begins its long journey through the stars" or something like that?

 Esmer wrote:
Since I haven't read the HH novel in question: How exactly was the Pharos device tied to the Nid swarms in the actual text? Was there some sort of epilogue in the vein of "Somewhere, in the dark corners of the universe, a gargantuan hungry presence focuses its attention upon the Milky Way and begins its long journey through the stars" or something like that?

Yeah it's exactly like that. It's in the epilogue of Pharos I think.

 Esmer wrote:
Since I haven't read the HH novel in question: How exactly was the Pharos device tied to the Nid swarms in the actual text? Was there some sort of epilogue in the vein of "Somewhere, in the dark corners of the universe, a gargantuan hungry presence focuses its attention upon the Milky Way and begins its long journey through the stars" or something like that?

Far beyond the fringes of the galaxy there was naught but endless black. Past the last few stray stars plying their lonely track through the cold night, past the dead worlds and the fragments of galactic collisions billions of years gone, past the probes sent out by extinct races recorded in no history…

past all that and beyond, there was a night sea studded with the diamond islands of distant, lonely galaxies.

Though incomprehensibly vast, this sea was not empty. Great behemoths of the deep lurked there.

Into the eternal blackness, a flash of quantum energy shone out at many times the speed of light; a brief flare, milliseconds in duration, projecting from an unremarkable spiral of stars.

It was not missed.

In the darkness, something of limitless hunger stirred in a slumber that had lasted for aeons. A million frozen and unblinking eyes saw the flash, tripping cascades of stimuli.

Their purpose served, the eyes died. The entity processed the message the eyes provided without ever truly awakening.

Automatically, instinctively, its gargantuan, dreaming mind analysed the signal, comparing it against all parameters for the one thing it sought.

Prey.

Slowly, glacially, the Great Devourer shifted its course.

That's the epilogue.

Devourer has geneatealers sent back in time in a time machine to pre- necrontyr biotransferrence, so there's technically been a presence tens of millions of years ago.

I do not think there has been more then onetyranid invasion and it is the one documented by the imperium. Other strains have merly been scouts.

The background on Genestealers being a branch of Tyranids is super old - I didn't realise it and always thought it was a later (2nd edition) addition, but it was in a WD (I forget the number - around the 115 mark, so late 80s/very early 90s)

Otherwise, I'm really not a fan of the current fashion is for every single dangerous alien that is otherwise unaccounted for has to be something to do with tyranids.
We've seen this with Catachan and other death worlds. Apparently it's not possible for dangerous life to evolve anywhere else, it has to be 'thought the result of a lost hive fleet spoor' or something similar, and we're obviously in some kind of weakling galaxy

We've also seen this rail-roading and lack of imagination happen in pre-heresy too, with the Kraken tail from Leman Russ' background on Fenris.

The genestealers seem to be evolving into a more effective anti-imperial force too. The kellermorph, 'billy the 'nid", is more than just a combat unit on a tabletop, he's a propaganda weapon, a symbol for GSC cults to rally round and give them faith and hope.

The GSCc understand human psychology to a degree than the hivemind may be capable of, and can actually use that knowledge to, maybe subconsciously, create specific creatures that are more that just biological killing machines, they're propaganda tools, inspirational figures.

UGH! I just had the horrifying thought of GSCs creating specific non combat models, like a 'seduction' model meant to seduce her/his/its way into influence over certain people. This would never show up on a battlefield, so it's outside the scope of 40k, thankfully.

When GW get motivated about tyranids one day they will probably find a day to wangle them into the HH.

Megarachnids maybe?

I think originally, pre 2nd Ed, genestealers were a chaos option

 Matt Swain wrote:
UGH! I just had the horrifying thought of GSCs creating specific non combat models, like a 'seduction' model meant to seduce her/his/its way into influence over certain people. This would never show up on a battlefield, so it's outside the scope of 40k, thankfully.

There's a Cain short story where a brothel has a genestealer problem...

 Matt Swain wrote:
The genestealers seem to be evolving into a more effective anti-imperial force too. The kellermorph, 'billy the 'nid", is more than just a combat unit on a tabletop, he's a propaganda weapon, a symbol for GSC cults to rally round and give them faith and hope.

The GSCc understand human psychology to a degree than the hivemind may be capable of, and can actually use that knowledge to, maybe subconsciously, create specific creatures that are more that just biological killing machines, they're propaganda tools, inspirational figures.

UGH! I just had the horrifying thought of GSCs creating specific non combat models, like a 'seduction' model meant to seduce her/his/its way into influence over certain people. This would never show up on a battlefield, so it's outside the scope of 40k, thankfully.

I guess you should watch the movie "Species".

 Matt Swain wrote:
UGH! I just had the horrifying thought of GSCs creating specific non combat models, like a 'seduction' model meant to seduce her/his/its way into influence over certain people. This would never show up on a battlefield, so it's outside the scope of 40k, thankfully.

I imagine that's what the Magus does when she's not fighting a war ;-)

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
UGH! I just had the horrifying thought of GSCs creating specific non combat models, like a 'seduction' model meant to seduce her/his/its way into influence over certain people. This would never show up on a battlefield, so it's outside the scope of 40k, thankfully.

There's a Cain short story where a brothel has a genestealer problem...

Also a Cain story where nids were frozen under ice 8000+ years before the imperium ran into them

Hecaton wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
UGH! I just had the horrifying thought of GSCs creating specific non combat models, like a 'seduction' model meant to seduce her/his/its way into influence over certain people. This would never show up on a battlefield, so it's outside the scope of 40k, thankfully.

I imagine that's what the Magus does when she's not fighting a war ;-)

bow-chicka-wow-wow GSC hentai comics inbound, nice!

Most of that stuff is from older background where everything was less nailed down and more ambiguous on purpose, to let you decide the answers to those questions and contradictions with your friends.

Before the internet wiki and "canon" sucked the fun out of everything.