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If they could pull it off in Starcraft, why not Warhammer? Joking aside, Between Tzeentch, Eldar, and Smart Inquisitors I'm sure they could come up with a way to do it.

The far more interesting question would be, what would happen to the individual tyranid species, what about the gene stealer cults?

Would some of the species become self aware? Find a way to survive? Would they become like animals that the other races would try to tame? Would the cults try to find a way to somehow resurrect the Hive Mind?

Personally, I really hope GW pursues a storyline like this at some point. Tyranids are cool but narratively they are so monolithic.

What do you all think?

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Trouble is, the Hive Mind isn’t a single entity.

It’s a group consciousness consisting of every Tyranid bio-beasty. Each contributes, and from that the whole of thing emerges.

You can disrupt its localised cohesion by wrecking a Tyranid force or Hive Fleet. And I dare say should you somehow pull off a miracle and reduce the entire species to just a single Hive Fleet, it will be diminished. But not dissipated.

   
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Focussing just on the genestealer cult item, my understanding was that the cults are effectively cut off from the hive mind. They infiltrate and set up a beacon to draw a fleet in to feed, but is there any feedback from the hive mind? If the mind suddenly disappeared, genestealers would continue to infiltrate and disrupt, it’s just there would be no end game. Eventually I suppose successful cults would just end up running the planets they embedded in. Might be quite a utopian society, with lots working toward a greater goal. Alternatively all the planet inhabitants could be considered as enslaved toward the ends of the patriarch alone.

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Genestealers are biologically determined to set up the Cults and spread the Curse, it's impossible for them to not do it. It might take different forms but in the end, the Curse always spreads. If there was no Hive Mind to be a beacon to then they would just keep on going until they die.
   
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You can't kill the hive mind without killing all tyranids, or somehow altering the DNA of the entire species. The Hive Mind is caused by the collective synapse of all tyranid lifeforms.

You can cut off individuals, or groups of individuals, from the Hive mind by isolating them in small enough numbers, but the tyranids have contingencies for that.

Certain biomorphs, specifically the smaller ones, do not contribute much to the Hive Mind. Which is why the older rules for tyranids could actually have the lesser nids lose control if they weren't close enough to a larger creature that acted as a synapse node.

In theory, a defeated hive fleet could leave behind a bunch of cut off lesser biomorphs, mostly gaunts and rippers, that would revert to normal animal behavior. They would burrow into the ecosystem and become simple predators. But, as I said there is a contingency. These biomorphs will multiply until eventually enough of a collective consciousness emerges that can restart the Hive Mind in the local area. It can then begin recreating more biomorphs to take over the planet, and eventually a hive ship so the fleet can continue to spread.

Compare this to Starcraft where the Zerg hivemind actually exists as a physical entity that could be destroyed. The Hive Mind is something else entirely, it is utterly alien. The Zerg are a bunch of different species that work together in a highly symbiotic relationship, but the Tyranids aren't anything like that. The Tyranids can't even properly be described as a bunch of organisms working together. Every biomorph that exists is only a single cell in the greater Tyranid organism, just like a single blood cell is just a tiny fraction of the human body. The Hive Mind is the amalgamation of all of those biomorphs combining their tiny contributions into something that is completely different to anything else.

The Hive Mind is utterly above any of the concepts of the races that inhabit the 40k galaxy. It isn't even really sentient, it is above sentience. Trying to comprehend what it is is like a single celled bacterium attempting to comprehend the existence of a human.

Honestly, I think the Tyranids are perhaps the most alien of aliens in all of Sci-fi history. They are a true cosmic horror, even more-so than anything Lovecraft came up with.

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Flinty wrote:Focussing just on the genestealer cult item, my understanding was that the cults are effectively cut off from the hive mind. They infiltrate and set up a beacon to draw a fleet in to feed, but is there any feedback from the hive mind? If the mind suddenly disappeared, genestealers would continue to infiltrate and disrupt, it’s just there would be no end game. Eventually I suppose successful cults would just end up running the planets they embedded in. Might be quite a utopian society, with lots working toward a greater goal. Alternatively all the planet inhabitants could be considered as enslaved toward the ends of the patriarch alone.

If at all possible, the cult would try to make its way off-planet, preferably with purestrains in tow, to spread the cult. But if that's impossible, they presumably just continue to subjugate all potential local resistance (imagine them killing of apex predators for instance) and maybe take up operations to render biomass into a more easily digestible form. I could see them farming lichen to functionally convert rocks into plants, for instance.

Grey Templar wrote:Snip

Yep. All this. You can look at catachan devils and fenrisian krakens for examples of tyranids that have become feral and evolved into less obviously tyranid-y shapes. And Old One Eye is an example of synapseless 'nids using a non-synaptic improvised leadership system based around... size maybe?

So in theory, if you have a synapse creature like a warrior or tervigon but no connection to a hivefleet or the hive mind at large, that synapse creature becomes the local boss and probably focuses on growing the local swarm to either make contact with the hive mind or create a new hive ship/fleet. And theoretically, there are a bunch of such tyranid factions floating around that are sufficiently large and sufficiently isolated to just be tiny hive minds in their own right. If they ever came within range of a hive fleet, they'd probably be reabsorbed into the fleet (either as troops or as food.)

But killing the hivemind as a whole implies that you've more or less killed off every tyranid in existence, or at least every synapse creature. And while I love me some zerg, it's probably tricky to refluff the 'nids as a bunch of individual commanders with their own personalities. Or if such a thing did happen, I have to think it would be the result of the 'nids experimenting or starting a yet unseen stage of their plans, and it would presumably have to involve intentionally isolating your Kerrigan equivalent from the hive mind as a whole. She'd have to be synaptically "deaf" but not "mute" in order to give commands but not get caught up in the noise of the greater hivemind.


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This is like asking "what if the State of New York died"

The State of New York only exists as a construct due to the people that make it up. It doesn't "die" (it's not even really alive in the traditional sense, much like the Hive Mind) - though you can sort of achieve that end by wiping out all the constituents in both cases.

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Wasn't it theorized that the catachan devil was descended from an ancient Tyranid species? And Ymgarl genestealers were also long abandoned Tyriand organisms. So it seems that some species will reach an equilibrium outside the hive mind's influence.

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 Grey Templar wrote:
You can't kill the hive mind without killing all tyranids, or somehow altering the DNA of the entire species. The Hive Mind is caused by the collective synapse of all tyranid lifeforms.

You can cut off individuals, or groups of individuals, from the Hive mind by isolating them in small enough numbers, but the tyranids have contingencies for that.

Certain biomorphs, specifically the smaller ones, do not contribute much to the Hive Mind. Which is why the older rules for tyranids could actually have the lesser nids lose control if they weren't close enough to a larger creature that acted as a synapse node.

In theory, a defeated hive fleet could leave behind a bunch of cut off lesser biomorphs, mostly gaunts and rippers, that would revert to normal animal behavior. They would burrow into the ecosystem and become simple predators. But, as I said there is a contingency. These biomorphs will multiply until eventually enough of a collective consciousness emerges that can restart the Hive Mind in the local area. It can then begin recreating more biomorphs to take over the planet, and eventually a hive ship so the fleet can continue to spread.

Compare this to Starcraft where the Zerg hivemind actually exists as a physical entity that could be destroyed. The Hive Mind is something else entirely, it is utterly alien. The Zerg are a bunch of different species that work together in a highly symbiotic relationship, but the Tyranids aren't anything like that. The Tyranids can't even properly be described as a bunch of organisms working together. Every biomorph that exists is only a single cell in the greater Tyranid organism, just like a single blood cell is just a tiny fraction of the human body. The Hive Mind is the amalgamation of all of those biomorphs combining their tiny contributions into something that is completely different to anything else.

The Hive Mind is utterly above any of the concepts of the races that inhabit the 40k galaxy. It isn't even really sentient, it is above sentience. Trying to comprehend what it is is like a single celled bacterium attempting to comprehend the existence of a human.

Honestly, I think the Tyranids are perhaps the most alien of aliens in all of Sci-fi history. They are a true cosmic horror, even more-so than anything Lovecraft came up with.


I'd say the Borg were similar if you don't think of the Queens as actual leaders but more like synapse creatures, but Voyager made that pretty unclear.
   
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Sgt. Cortez wrote:


I'd say the Borg were similar if you don't think of the Queens as actual leaders but more like synapse creatures, but Voyager made that pretty unclear.


Ehhh, the Borg is a hive mind, but it still retains a sense of its own individuality. The Borg is sentient and can interact with and comprehend individual beings, usually through an intermediary it creates. Even the Borg's greeting to its victims implies it is aware of their existance as fellow sentient beings as it conveys 3 bits of information. It introduces itself. "We are the Borg". It explains what it is doing. "You will be assimilated". and finally it explains that you shouldn't struggle. "Resistance is Futile". The Borg can have a conversation with a specific mortal being, it operates on at least a similar level to normal sentient beings.

The Hive Mind can't do that. It isn't capable of registering the existence of individual mortal beings. It's mental processes work on such a higher level. It can't comprehend the mortal inhabitants of the galaxy, and they cannot comprehend it. It is above and beyond communication, thought, explanation, and comprehension.

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The Borg comparison is quite good.

The hive mind took a big blow actually. When chaos split the galaxy in two the hive mind lost connection for a small time. When it recouped it had know... something, pain or fear I do not remember, for the first time. Come 8th edition codex and they had a new hive fleet. Specialized in killing chaos daemons. Yeah, that got their attension.

Regarding GSC there are many exceptions to common practices. There was one patriarch who delayed the arrival for the tyranids because he wanted revenge in a planatery governor. And the nids would take that pleasure away. Also, there where som GSC who did not get eaten by the nids. Nobody knows why but now they fly around with the nids. Like small fish with sharks. Some GSC spread out thin. Some going from small asteroid comunaty to the next. And the twisted helix mostly spread in the form of medisin injection. Lastly there is that siren planet the diamond nids protect. (white and green?) Ever person who sets foot on that planet becomes a GSC enthusiast.

Nedless to say it is very diverse.

   
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If you were to cut the Tyranids off from the Warp that would likely kill the Hive Mind since, far as we can tell, that's kind of how they communicate and covers how the Hive Mind can influence over such vast distances even when fleets aren't physically close together.

Though it has its limits - eg Genestealer Cults who often operate far outside of the regular range, but will start to act like a beacon once they are enough of them at a high enough level of evolution to generate a signal.








I would say the first thing is as other said, most things like gaunts would just become rather wild animals in nature. They might not be able to procreate though so chances are they'd "burn out" after a time.


What would likely happen is that higher order tyranids all the way up to Norn Queens would function fairly well and the Queens would start hyper-evolving (in total isolation of course so it would take them potentially longer) new strains of Tyranid. Likely developing vocal capacity* or other forms of communication method and incorporating the understanding of how to communicate that way into new broods.


I would likely stall hive fleets until they could evolve along those lines and then they'd resume. They'd likely lose their edge; slower communication would plague them for a time and affect how they'd invade worlds and react to dangers.
Each Hive fleet would also be in isolation from the others so they'd likely lose some capacity of collective tactics. However if the Queens were smart they'd attempt to gather around a key focal point (the world they've built would likely act as just such a universal focal point) and then coordinate and splinter off. Likely developing long distance communication scouts to spread out and find other wayward hive fleets.





So they'd lose a lot of their capacity, but I suspect they would evolve and adapt. However we'd likely see the Queens becoming much like the Queens from Starcraft 2 in that they'd have greater control over their fleets Identity and structure and formation. So you'd fast see fleets diverging what they'd produce. This could lead to actual civil war; however as the concept of unity is so strong within Tyranids it might never happen; they might evolve personalities in a sense of unique evolutions and tactics that are unique to them; but any rejoining would see a sharing of that data.





*They always scream in games and videos, but in the codex they are supposed to be near silent vocally. The only screams are from when they super-charge their bioplasma to throw at you, hence why the screamer killer was called that. It screamed because it was about to vomit up a ball of super hot plasma into your face.

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Cutting off the Tyranids in the Milky Way from the Warp wouldn't kill the Hive Mind though, it would just cut its access to the tendrils in the Milky Way. It would still be there just unable to do anything within the area of Null power.
   
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 Gert wrote:
Cutting off the Tyranids in the Milky Way from the Warp wouldn't kill the Hive Mind though, it would just cut its access to the tendrils in the Milky Way. It would still be there just unable to do anything within the area of Null power.


Far as we are sort of aware the Hive Mind isn't so much a warp creature living in the warp as it is the manifestation of all the tyranid minds. So if you separate the two, in theory, there'd be nothing in the warp at all because all it is is a creation of those minds. It would be the same as if you killed every single Tyranid, no minds, no hive mind, no warp presence at all.



Of course this all assumes that its 100% not a warp creature. Or that it couldn't some how project itself into the warp if it sensed that it was going to get cut off from the physical world.

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 Grey Templar wrote:

Honestly, I think the Tyranids are perhaps the most alien of aliens in all of Sci-fi history. They are a true cosmic horror, even more-so than anything Lovecraft came up with.

I was agreeing with all of your post before I got to this last line, and... buudddyy... you need to explore a wider range of sci-fi.

The Tyranids are not a particularly notable rendering of "alienness" in sci-fi. Most of their behaviours/qualities/design are broadly recognizable to us, and very human. Violence, acquisition of territory and material, they have a very recognizable hierarchy, they're more or less humanoid, they use gun-shaped bioweapons ffs! And since the 5th edition codex GW has even brought things like personality, individual memory, cunning, etc. vaguely into the picture.

If you want some actual interesting "alienness" read all of Lem's books, Watts' Blindsight, some Iain M. Banks, Ted Chiang, etc.
   
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Lem wanted to have aliens so strange we could not understand them. In Solaris they have no idea what the alien is, it is some sort of liquid oacain on a planet. But without spoiling to much the book breaks down very fundamental consepts we have of our own reality. I have not read it, just seen both movies and it is quite good.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Is probably better as a book, because the movie is quite high consept. But the idea is that just as insects do not understand the rubbish left when humans have a piconick, humans do not understand the artifacts left by aliens. Quite good consept, also very 40K.

Watts blindisght is a great read. But the aliens are not so weard you do not understand them. But he pushes consepts quite far. I like that.

The problem with having really not understandable aliens is that it makes for bad entertainment and narrative. Only if you shift the focus over to not understanding does it become interesting and warhammer is a narrative sett so you can fight. Arrival and to some extent Contact are good examples of such narratives.

   
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Each Hive Fleet is commanded by a distinct Hive Mind. In Dawn of War 2, the Hive Mind is killed by the neurotoxin, causing the majority of the Tyranids to become feral. Command of the entire swarm falls on a buffed-up Hive Tyrant and when this creature is killed, the Tyranids are all shattered.

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Also you know, the issue that the Dawn of War Hive Fleet was a tendril of Leviathan, and that tendril dying had no effect on the larger Hive Fleet.

Plus the Dawn of War 2 main campaign is old 4th edition lore, before the creation of the Swarmlord, which can be spawned by any Hive Fleet and thus suggest a greater degree of coordination between Hive Fleets.

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 Tyran wrote:
Also you know, the issue that the Dawn of War Hive Fleet was a tendril of Leviathan, and that tendril dying had no effect on the larger Hive Fleet.

Plus the Dawn of War 2 main campaign is old 4th edition lore, before the creation of the Swarmlord, which can be spawned by any Hive Fleet and thus suggest a greater degree of coordination between Hive Fleets.


Dawn of War 2 was released in 2009, which is 5th edition. There is the Swarmlord in Retribution (2011), but I am not sure when the Tyranid Codex for this edition was released. I don't think the Tyranids had gone through major lore reworks like the Necrons to make their portrayal in Dawn of War 2 less relevant.


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bibotot wrote:
 Tyran wrote:
Also you know, the issue that the Dawn of War Hive Fleet was a tendril of Leviathan, and that tendril dying had no effect on the larger Hive Fleet.

Plus the Dawn of War 2 main campaign is old 4th edition lore, before the creation of the Swarmlord, which can be spawned by any Hive Fleet and thus suggest a greater degree of coordination between Hive Fleets.


Dawn of War 2 was released in 2009, which is 5th edition. There is the Swarmlord in Retribution (2011), but I am not sure when the Tyranid Codex for this edition was released. I don't think the Tyranids had gone through major lore reworks (aside from Genestealer Cults) like the Necrons to make their portrayal in Dawn of War 2 less relevant.

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bibotot wrote:
 Tyran wrote:
Also you know, the issue that the Dawn of War Hive Fleet was a tendril of Leviathan, and that tendril dying had no effect on the larger Hive Fleet.

Plus the Dawn of War 2 main campaign is old 4th edition lore, before the creation of the Swarmlord, which can be spawned by any Hive Fleet and thus suggest a greater degree of coordination between Hive Fleets.


Dawn of War 2 was released in 2009, which is 5th edition. There is the Swarmlord in Retribution (2011), but I am not sure when the Tyranid Codex for this edition was released. I don't think the Tyranids had gone through major lore reworks like the Necrons to make their portrayal in Dawn of War 2 less relevant.


While the 5th edition of the 40k core rules was indeed out by then, the Tyranid 5th edition codex didn't come out until 2010, a year after the game. Which is why the base Dawn of War 2 game didn't contain any of the newer units from when the 5th edition codex massively expanded the tyranid range.
4th ed tyranid lore is all that was out when the game was made. It is fair to say it was based on 4th edition lore.
   
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as Devestation of Baal showed us the Hive mind is both a single over arching mind and all of the Tyranids at once, able to take over individuals with a purpose we would call sentience as well as directing whole fleets at the same time.

Devestation of Baal also showed us that the Hive mind can be attacked directly by the gods and for the first time in its existence the Hive mind itself was wounded when the Citrix maledictum was opened cutting it off from the Tyranids attacking Baal, which in turn led them to revert back to their animal nature and even be affected by Chaos to turn upon each other in a blood orgy.
   
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Devastation of Baal has some pretty stupid characterization of the Hive Mind, IMO. It moves away from the idea of a gestalt collective consciousness, and into more of a warp god that tells the Tyranids what to do and demonstrates very human emotions and behavior. The idea of the Hive Mind possessing an individual Tyranid to make it super-intelligent just seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Hive Mind is.

According to books pre-DoB, the Hive Mind is just the collective consciousness of all the critters linked into a giant psychically-connected network. 'What if the Hive Mind died' is a question akin to 'What if the Internet died'. You can damage the infrastructure that allows the network to function, but the network isn't a single entity.

According to DoB, the Hive Mind is a warp god that orders troops around, can possess them as needed, can be directly hurt or killed psychically, and when it's gone the entire Tyranid race starts to fall apart.

So really it depends on whether you take Guy Haley as canon.

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It also states that you cannot permanently kill the Hive Mind without killing the Tyranid race first.
The Leviathan must be killed in the flesh, then the mind will die, for the mind is generated by the creatures it guides

Even the point blank opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum only temporally killed it, once the warp tide receded the Hive Mind was brought back by the surviving Tyranid creatures on Baal.

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bibotot wrote:


Dawn of War 2 was released in 2009, which is 5th edition. There is the Swarmlord in Retribution (2011), but I am not sure when the Tyranid Codex for this edition was released. I don't think the Tyranids had gone through major lore reworks like the Necrons to make their portrayal in Dawn of War 2 less relevant.


The thing about tyranids is that you don't need major lore reworks when your lore is so inconsistent and fragmented that there's very little set in stone to begin with.

For tyranids, anything beyond space locusts that eat planets and directed by an overarching hive mind intelligence is up in the air. They kind of have to be, since from a narrative perspective they can do nothing but lose. Think of them as the Empire from Star Wars--you're told they have all these major advantages, but you never see them, and then as lore expands, those advantages get hammered time and time again to the point you wonder, well gee, how did they even manage to hold on as long as they did.

Essentially, anything can be done with Tyranids with barely any stretching in their lore.

 Grey Templar wrote:


In theory, a defeated hive fleet could leave behind a bunch of cut off lesser biomorphs, mostly gaunts and rippers, that would revert to normal animal behavior. They would burrow into the ecosystem and become simple predators. But, as I said there is a contingency. These biomorphs will multiply until eventually enough of a collective consciousness emerges that can restart the Hive Mind in the local area. It can then begin recreating more biomorphs to take over the planet, and eventually a hive ship so the fleet can continue to spread.



I believe this actually happened in the Amphelion books from FW. The Imperium caught some Tyranids, put them into zoo-like enclosures, and then a few escaped. What was really interesting is that the Tyranids still in the enclosures continued to act normally, but those that had escaped started breeding in nests unbeknown to the Imperials. Eventually the planet was overrun, and the last shuttle escaped as three hierophant bio-titans were bearing down on it.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Wasn't it theorized that the catachan devil was descended from an ancient Tyranid species? And Ymgarl genestealers were also long abandoned Tyriand organisms. So it seems that some species will reach an equilibrium outside the hive mind's influence.


You're correct. It's theorized that some supremely dangerous organisms are related to tyranids. The theory, last I read, is that tyrannocytes (Tyranid's kind of...catch all cell which is responsible from anything from digestion to healing to being deadly venomous to any other creature, as well as providing an ever changing resistance to pathogens encountered including, in some lore, virus bombs) are so resilient and pervasive that they end up infecting the environment even if an invasion is stopped. I haven't really heard of this going anywhere, and it's close to what orks are somewhat known for, so it seems GW may have quietly dropped this aspect.

Genestealers, though, are specifically tailored vanguard organisms. It's less likely they would be an oopsydaisy like the catachan devil could be and more of a purpose designed organism meant to operate outside the hive mind (like in space hulks), create their own mini hive mind (like in GSCs), or within the hive mind in a proper fleet (like in main tyranid forces).
   
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Altima wrote:

In theory, a defeated hive fleet could leave behind a bunch of cut off lesser biomorphs, mostly gaunts and rippers, that would revert to normal animal behavior. They would burrow into the ecosystem and become simple predators. But, as I said there is a contingency. These biomorphs will multiply until eventually enough of a collective consciousness emerges that can restart the Hive Mind in the local area. It can then begin recreating more biomorphs to take over the planet, and eventually a hive ship so the fleet can continue to spread.

It is also a recurring theme in the 8th edition Codex about how damn impossible it is to permakill a Hive Fleet. There is always buried organisms and splinter fleets that survive and restarts the whole thing again.
   
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I am probably buthering my memory of the lore here, but wasn't there something where a Farseer tells a story about the race that created the Eldar, and the Necrons, also created the Tyranids, who got out of hand? They are sort of like the Reapers of Mass Effect. They were created to be a CTRL-ALT-DELETE button for the entire universe. Basically, wipe the slate clean and start over?

Again, I can't remember where this is from, but I swear I thought it was a Farseer talking about the pre-cursor races creating the first races, and then dying.
   
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Could be old fluff. There was a lot of weird stuff during RT.

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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I am probably buthering my memory of the lore here, but wasn't there something where a Farseer tells a story about the race that created the Eldar, and the Necrons, also created the Tyranids, who got out of hand? They are sort of like the Reapers of Mass Effect. They were created to be a CTRL-ALT-DELETE button for the entire universe. Basically, wipe the slate clean and start over?

Again, I can't remember where this is from, but I swear I thought it was a Farseer talking about the pre-cursor races creating the first races, and then dying.


No there wasn't.

For decades people have been peddling these kinds of fanfiction as if they were from GW, and usually with the same kind of, "I swear I read it somewhere but I can't remember where" (and of course they never come back with actual sources and citations), only for others to then read and then think GW had said it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/12 07:54:32


 
   
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Iracundus wrote:
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I am probably buthering my memory of the lore here, but wasn't there something where a Farseer tells a story about the race that created the Eldar, and the Necrons, also created the Tyranids, who got out of hand? They are sort of like the Reapers of Mass Effect. They were created to be a CTRL-ALT-DELETE button for the entire universe. Basically, wipe the slate clean and start over?

Again, I can't remember where this is from, but I swear I thought it was a Farseer talking about the pre-cursor races creating the first races, and then dying.


No there wasn't.

For decades people have been peddling these kinds of fanfiction as if they were from GW, and usually with the same kind of, "I swear I read it somewhere but I can't remember where" (and of course they never come back with actual sources and citations), only for others to then read and then think GW had said it.


I'm sorry for being part of that problem then. I think I am getting my fluffs mixed up. A super "Group think race" is not exactly new fluff. There are many books I've read or stories in the world you experience when growing up in the genre of Sci-fi where this is the basic premise of a race/culture/BBEG. Just to name a few:

The Borg (Star Trek)
The Zerg (Starcraft)
The Many (System Shock 2)
The Hive mind (x2) The Skinner and Einstien's Bridge
The Phoners (Cell)
The Skrin (Command and conquer)
The Swarm (Prey)
The Yrr (The Swarm)
The Modron (D&D)
The Flood (Halo)
The Rachni (Mass Effect)
Fromics (SP?) (Ender's Game)


If you want a more exact list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_mind_(science_fiction)

So yeah. It's hard to keep my fluff tight when this is such an lazy and over utilized trope of BBE
   
 
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