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Might sound like a strange question, but is it really? Is the hive mind perfect? Are there multiple hive minds?

Ever seen a few black ants marching with the red ants? It happens. Sometimes when black ant pupae are stolen by red ants, they hatch in the red ant hive, and instantly take on the pheromonal signature of the red ants around them. Contrary to popular beluef, these are not "slave" black ants. They do what ants always do, they go raiding for their hive, and fight alongside their hive-mates, who see them as exactly that.

Have a look at this vv

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/810567.page

Yeah, yeah. I'm peddling my own stuff, but one of the things my players -now far away from this, in Sullen Furies subsector, having just (kind of by the skin of their teeth) managed to steal some much needed equipment from a Gretchin mining planet to keep their ship running- are going to find out is that Splinter Fleet Winged Dragon has diverged so far from the Hive Fleet norm that it is no longer seen as Tyranid by the other Tyranids. With all of its emphasis on flying nids and mind-slaves, the signature isn't quite right, and so, (this hasn't happened yet, but it will be one of the shockers in the campaign) at some point in the future the players will need to fight the nids, to find out that there is a nid civil war going on.

Actually, just one divergent sub-species fighting another.

Anyway, I can't have been the first to come up with this, and I imagine there are rules for nids fighting each other for whatever reason, or at least homebrew rules for people who have done it.

I'd love to hear about any such, and how it was done.

Short answer - yes Tyranids do fight Tyranids.


The reasoning why is unknown formally, but from other races impressions the idea is that Tyranids basically conduct vast weapons-tests of their most effective genes.


One interesting thing about Tyranids is that whilst they can adapt their DNA, its not like plucking items off a shelf. They appear to need an element of random DNA creation during vast reproduction to create new small variations with then need mass testing. Basically Tyranids can design their own DNA to a point and then rely on a hyper-sped-up simplified concept of survival of the fittest to let the best strains rise to the top.


So if they don't have an opponent, fighting themselves seems to be part of how they kick-start this process of hyper evolution.



The idea of subfactions within the Hive Mind is unknown. We don't really have any idea how the Hive Mind works, though with their continued warp influence it seems likely that some part of it runs in the Warp. Which would explain how the Hive Mind can operate over vast interstellar distances.

But does a Hive Fleet operate like a Zerg Cerberous; is it fully thinking on its own and the Hive Mind is more of a concept of how the Tyranids work? We don't know.


We do know that there are Tyranids that can operate outside of the limits of the Hive Mind. Genestealers, Genestealer cults, Lictors and many others are designed to have enough thinking power to operate on their own.
We also have the concept of the Synapse range running out; so the idea that Tyranids can lose contact with the greater part of the Hive Mind. And yet many seem welcoming and very easily absorbed back in when they get within range of it once more.

Hive Fleets have been known to engage each other, but to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, not two tendrils of the same Hive Fleet.

This could simply be the Hive Mind destruction testing its various approaches. It could also be indicative there’s not a single Hive Mind, that perhaps each distinct Hive Fleet has an identity unto itself, and there is some level of internal competition. Possibly a smidge of both.

 Overread wrote:
Short answer - yes Tyranids do fight Tyranids.

But does a Hive Fleet operate like a Zerg Cerberous; is it fully thinking on its own and the Hive Mind is more of a concept of how the Tyranids work? We don't know.


We do know that there are Tyranids that can operate outside of the limits of the Hive Mind. Genestealers, Genestealer cults, Lictors and many others are designed to have enough thinking power to operate on their own.
We also have the concept of the Synapse range running out; so the idea that Tyranids can lose contact with the greater part of the Hive Mind. And yet many seem welcoming and very easily absorbed back in when they get within range of it once more.

Good points. Ever since the beginning of 40k, there have been nids that were less connected to the hive mind.

Actual Tyranid warriors, it would seem, are 100% Tyranid. But can the same be said of genestealers? What about those that are a little further out, such as the genestealer cultists who have just recently been implanted? Fully enslaved they may be, but fully Tyranid? Questionable.

This brings another idea to mind. I think I might have my rebel mechanicus (who, of course, see the nids as every bit as much a threat as the Imperium does) perform some experiments on the nids, trying to see if they can re-infect the infection. Maybe find a way to modify the DNA of some Tyranid creatures, and then try to release them back into the hive, as some kind of genetic bomb?

Cool stuff! Thanks!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hive Fleets have been known to engage each other, but to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, not two tendrils of the same Hive Fleet.

Thanks!

This could simply be the Hive Mind destruction testing its various approaches. It could also be indicative there’s not a single Hive Mind, that perhaps each distinct Hive Fleet has an identity unto itself, and there is some level of internal competition. Possibly a smidge of both.

At a minimum, there would certainly need to be rules for what happens if two or three players show up for game night... and everybody only brought Tyranid armies.

Its easy enough when that happens with IG, marines, chaos, pretty much every other race, so you'd need an excuse for nids to be able to fight nids.

At a minimum, I imagine that some nids could be seen as having a genetic defect of some kind.

On the Genestealer Cultist front it varies. Some of the cultists won't even have any genetic modifications, they are just part of the cult because the cult is offering them a better chance at life.

The higher up the cult you go the more genetic modification you get. Furthermore older members of the cult will breed within the cult which reinforces the Genestealer genes until they hit purestrain - ergo pure genestealers.


How high up you go before you are fully part of the hive is up for debate. Certainly Genestealer Cults have turned on Tyranids when the Hive Fleet arrives and they find out that their Gods are going to eat them. However other cults embrace them openly.

Tyranids have also been seen to ensure/aid some Cultists leaving a world to seed others.

 Overread wrote:
Certainly Genestealer Cults have turned on Tyranids when the Hive Fleet arrives and they find out that their Gods are going to eat them.

Have any references? And are we referring to the cultists who have been "genetically initiated" or just hangers-on who are in alliance with the "servants of the gods" but are really just fully human dupes?

 NapoleonInSpace wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Certainly Genestealer Cults have turned on Tyranids when the Hive Fleet arrives and they find out that their Gods are going to eat them.

Have any references? And are we referring to the cultists who have been "genetically initiated" or just hangers-on who are in alliance with the "servants of the gods" but are really just fully human dupes?

I think most of it is casual references in the codex and lore scattered around. It seems that at one level you gain some head bumps and maybe another arm, but you're still mostly human minded; then at some unspecified point you become more and more Tyranid.

That said most of the cults will have more people at the bottom than the top

GSC only kind of fight alongside the Hive Fleets when the day of ascension arrives.

Whilst not universal, the invading organisms are described as largely ignoring the Cult Forces. At least until the Hive Mind decides its Elevensies, and wrests control of the Purestrains and Patriarch, who turn on their now former brothers in arms without flinching. To add to the confusion, that’s not necessarily an all or nothing deal either.

Then again GSC don't really fight Tyranids. One sided slaughter is a more appropriate term.

In the novel "the greater good", the fact that two hive fleets (even if one is just a small splinter of a hive fleet) will instinctively attack and try to wipe out each other is a key element in the imperium stopping a hive fleet invasion. a collection of tyrannid samples collected by a magos biologis start fighting the invading nid forces, which are from a different hive fleet.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
that’s not necessarily an all or nothing deal either.

Does not compute.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mithril2098 wrote:
In the novel "the greater good", the fact that two hive fleets (even if one is just a small splinter of a hive fleet) will instinctively attack and try to wipe out each other is a key element in the imperium stopping a hive fleet invasion. a collection of tyrannid samples collected by a magos biologis start fighting the invading nid forces, which are from a different hive fleet.

Spoiler:

once the samples are all awake and fighting, the imperial forces even notice that the two groups seem to be able to negate each other's synapse network control.(the portion of a bioship controlling the samples force of nids apparently being able to interfere with the psionic network controlling the forces of the invading fleet. suggesting that had the full bioship or a full fleet been involved, the battle would have been as much one of fleetmind vs fleet mind as creature vs creature.)

Only a novel, of course, but that's interesting. Still, if every splinter fleet was fighting every other one, it seems that the Imperium could just hunker down and let the bugs wipe each other out.

However, if that's just a function of the nids defeat by the Imperium/Eldar, it seems that they are pretty brittle, and always one major defeat away from oblivion.

Hive Fleets will also consume each other to consolidate their biomass. While at the surface level it would look like the smaller forms were fighting each other, in the large scale it would be a person playing chess with themselves.

If the Hive Mind wanted to transmit DNA from one fleet to another it might send a tendril of the doner fleet towards one of the others so they could collect the sample. While the Hive Mind can do a lot of stuff remotely, it does appear to need physical tranmission for a lot of stuff as well.

I like to think that the lesser biomorphs are kinda dumb, in the sense that they can't think "Oh, these guys are ours". They only recognize biomorphs from their own fleet as friendly and outside of the hive mind micromanaging its small biomorphs it can't keep them from fighting each other. And even within the same fleet, if synapse is disrupted the various biomorphs can fight each other too.

Each creature is essentially preprogrammed in such a way that autopilot is basically "eat everything" and there isn't very good friendly recognition built into the system.

And the Hive Mind's "self-awareness" isn't great, so it can't really at a grand scale realize "Oopsie, i'm eating myself" in an instant and cause 2 colliding swarms to stop and merge peacefully. It's slow and ponderous, but constantly adapting and learning.

Tyranids are curious because on one level you can see that the Swarm itself is very intelligent and able to adapt and change its actions. It's able to plan ahead, its able to manipulate and form complex strategies.

It's even able to communicate and infiltrate humanity in forming Cults.


And yet at the same time there are elements of its behaviour that we would consider more instinctive. Tyranids are almost a hybrid of extreme instinctive behaviour and intelligence all at once. Made muddy because we never heard their own voice in the story so we have to guess at things.

Are those hive fleets fighting because the Swarm operates on survival of the fittest and that's the best way to ensure your best combat evolutions survive; is it instinct simply to kill anything that moves; is it a different form of simply merging biomass since the combatants are not individuals and the loss of energy is not considered important; is it because there is some semblance of individuality/self preservation operating at the higher ends of the swarm. So whilst the gaunts don't care the hiveships/norn queens do want to survive and thus fight to ensure that they and their DNA comes out the winner;



I don't hold that its just instinct to kill. Gaunt level or ripper level perhaps, but we've also seen hive fleets work together more than once. There's even a whole fleet dedicated to fighting demons which relies heavily on another hive fleet pre-digesting worlds and leaving the biomass ready to suck up because the demon fighting force takes losses constantly but doesn't get returned biomass in the same volume because demons just vanish when killed.

The Hive Mind has intelligence. However its purpose is primal: To survive, grow, consume in order to survive, grow, consume, ad infinitum.

The Hive Mind either does not know about genuine non-violent interaction with others, perhaps because it has only ever been by itself with no peers so it doesn't know how to get along with others other than to try to consume them. Or the Hive Mind has concluded that there is no other purpose to existence and that all these other things it encounters in other races such as art, philosophy, ideology, etc... are meaningless rubbish. Maybe the Hive Mind even considers these things a memetic virus/weapon, to weaken the efficiency of those that start believing in such things.

I mean it is the 40k universe, who the heck believes in genuine non-violent interaction with others?

Certainly not humanity, nor the Eldar, nor the Necrons, definitely not the Orks, Chaos lols about it and even the Tau offer one hand in friendship while the other firmly grasps a railgun aimed at their new "friend".

The Hive Mind probably doesn’t even conceive of what it does as being violent as such. It’s just….eating.

Whilst it sucks to get in their way, it’s no more evil or malicious than any other predator sorting out a bit of supper.

Whether it’s even intelligent as we understand it is open to question. It could simply be an overlaying of many instincts and pack tactics being mistaken for discernment and that.

I mean, if we look at our world? We see species building traps, or solitary hunting, or pack hunting.

What the Hive Mind can do is all three, like we can. And because we see that nowhere else, the assumption is it’s intelligence, not simply instinct.

As Overread noted, the Hive Mind does make decisions beyond immediate feeding as Kronos focusing on Chaos, Leviathan leaving worlds predigested for Kronos and, in the recent Leviathan novel, ignoring a resource rich world to focus on a strategically important world.

The assumption is intelligence because otherwise you will underestimate it and make a lot of strategic mistakes and get eaten.

 Tyran wrote:
As Overread noted, the Hive Mind does make decisions beyond immediate feeding as Kronos focusing on Chaos, Leviathan leaving worlds predigested for Kronos and, in the recent Leviathan novel, ignoring a resource rich world to focus on a strategically important world.

The assumption is intelligence because otherwise you will underestimate it and make a lot of strategic mistakes and get eaten.

Also Tiamat building... something (probably a beacon-planet).

To be honest i think people attribute way more consciousness and selfawareness to the hive mind than it actually has. It comes across as much more animalistic in the lore, which is why it is so alien and impossible to interact with directly. but people always talk about it like its just some person sitting at a computer console giving orders in a galaxy wide RTS game.

So most of the creatures encountered in lore are things like gaunts and such. Creatures that are born for one purpose - killing. Or things like rippers burn to eat and kill.

So many people do only see them as beasts because those creatures are only given beast-like brains and function by the hive mind.


However there are creatures like the Hive Tyrant, Norn Emissaries and others that are much smarter. They coordinate plans, they strategise and they do things that are not purely what most would consider "instinctive".


The fact that tyranids change behaviour; that they evolve and adapt; that they specifically target key worlds and frontiers. All these things show that whilst they do have elements of being slaved to their nature/instinct; they are also capable thinkers.





If Tyranids would purely an eating machine with very limited intelligence then Imperial and other races would have found ways to tame/trick them in an effective manner




I don't think the Hive Mind is one entity sitting at a table playing an RTS game. The nature of the Hive Mind is still a very grey concept.

However its well established that any commander that treats the Tyranids as brainless beasts tends to lose. Tyranids are very capable thinkers, you just have to look at the thinking ones not the drones.

Heck look at how Patriarchs build whole Genestealer Cults!

The Hive Mind is more like a manager that sets high level objectives for the Tyranid leader-beasts to follow and achieve.

Moreover there are different levels of leaderbeasts, each one associated with a particular organizational level.

Norn Queens work at purely development level, organizing and maintaining the Tyranid genetic information and its applications. Hive Tyrants are strategic commanders, Tyranid Warriors are tactical leaders and others leader-beasts fill their respective niches and roles. Each one with different degrees of intelligence, independence and awareness required for their respective tasks.

Well ff one needs to do some weapons testing for the science division trying to figure out a new way to make things go boom... and the soldiers themselves literally are the weapons... and the value of their lives is only measured in whatever energy it takes to grow them...

Besides most Nids are getting redigested at the end of an invasion anyways. Might as well get some good ole testing data on their way out!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mithril2098 wrote:
To be honest i think people attribute way more consciousness and selfawareness to the hive mind than it actually has. It comes across as much more animalistic in the lore, which is why it is so alien and impossible to interact with directly. but people always talk about it like its just some huperson sitting at a computer console giving orders in a galaxy wide RTS game.

I think it is difficult to wrap one's mind around the way it is described in the lore. It certainly took years for it to finally 'click' for me that Tyranids are not really multiple organisms any more than a human is multiple organisms. Sure we have untold billions of cells with all sorts of different specialisms and means of organization, but those are still just incredibly tiny pieces of the one larger creature.

In that manner, one may be better off looking at a given Tyranid 'individual' as something akin to a white blood cell within the body of the impossibly immense entity that is the Hive Mind.

That is also another way to view it, and one that has gotten a lot of support in recent lore.

The Tyranid race is the body, the Hive Mind is... well the mind and soul and the whole thing makes one organism.

And you don't personally go and tell your stomach to start digesting or your white cells to start hunting intruders, your body does that automatically because there is some degree of "automatic intelligence" in your body that tells each part of itself what to do.

That argument also helps explain why some aspects of the Tyranids appear to be instinctive or odd from the point of view of a hyper intelligence. Such as the fact that whilst they can control and adapt their DNA; they also get a lot of random mutation and use that as a function to evolve; both on the battlefield and in "field tests" and such.

There's also other things such as how different Hive Fleets don't perfectly communicate information with each other. Whilst we have elements like the Swarm Lord who can dip into any Hive Fleet, showing that they are indeed linked; we have other things such as local fleets having specific evolutions that others do not exhibit.

Yeah. It also puts into context the disposeability of Tyranid troops. Losing some skin cells to swat a fly is hardly me suffering 'casualties' after all.

 Overread wrote:
That argument also helps explain why some aspects of the Tyranids appear to be instinctive or odd from the point of view of a hyper intelligence. Such as the fact that whilst they can control and adapt their DNA; they also get a lot of random mutation and use that as a function to evolve; both on the battlefield and in "field tests" and such.

There's also other things such as how different Hive Fleets don't perfectly communicate information with each other. Whilst we have elements like the Swarm Lord who can dip into any Hive Fleet, showing that they are indeed linked; we have other things such as local fleets having specific evolutions that others do not exhibit.

A human undergoes controlled mutation of its immune cells in response to an infection and over time selects for those that perform the best. All of this is done without conscious thought from the brain. The Hive Mind is best thought of in a similar fashion. A lot of the things it does may be done by its local Synapse organisms and can be viewed as intelligence of a fashion, though whether or not the Hive Mind as a whole is actually consciously micromanaging that Gaunt brood is uncertain. Just as a human is not consciously micromanging their food digestion, the Hive Mind's resolution of perception may not extend down that far, even though its individual Synapse organisms may be coordinating and making local decisions.

 Overread wrote:
That argument also helps explain why some aspects of the Tyranids appear to be instinctive or odd from the point of view of a hyper intelligence. Such as the fact that whilst they can control and adapt their DNA; they also get a lot of random mutation and use that as a function to evolve; both on the battlefield and in "field tests" and such.

There's also other things such as how different Hive Fleets don't perfectly communicate information with each other. Whilst we have elements like the Swarm Lord who can dip into any Hive Fleet, showing that they are indeed linked; we have other things such as local fleets having specific evolutions that others do not exhibit.

Which I think is quite cool, also from the perspective that evolition doesn't always go in the right direction.

The simplest example of this is deformed cells or organs within the body, or imperfect systems, such as cancerous cells, leukemia, etc.

On a higher level, of course, the body-mind can develop various forms of insanity that cause it to purge itself from the... collective?

Thus, a human being may be simply and harmlessly delusional. A man who believed himself to be a rock might simply sit out in the elements all day until he expired.

On a higher and more dangerous level, he might have some murderous delusion, that caused him to think he was a super-being, charged by god or his own hyper-evolved consciousness with exterminating inferior humans.

I have a vague idea that this is the direction I want my splinter-fleet Winged Dragon (or Dying Dragon, as the Imperium calls it in scorn... but also possibly in trepidation) to take.

Is it simply a defective strain, or is it, in fact, a more lethal mutation, that threatens humanity and the Tyranid organism as well, with extinction?

Dunno at this point. I do know its fun!

If you want an example of the Hive fleets rejecting a dangerous genetic sample, the Ymgarl genestealer strain is a great place to start. It is not known why they are never reabsorbed into the hive fleets, but it is hypothesised that they are considered dangerous due to extremely unstable mutation.

 Haighus wrote:
If you want an example of the Hive fleets rejecting a dangerous genetic sample, the Ymgarl genestealer strain is a great place to start. It is not known why they are never reabsorbed into the hive fleets, but it is hypothesised that they are considered dangerous due to extremely unstable mutation.

Very cool. Got a link?

 NapoleonInSpace wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
If you want an example of the Hive fleets rejecting a dangerous genetic sample, the Ymgarl genestealer strain is a great place to start. It is not known why they are never reabsorbed into the hive fleets, but it is hypothesised that they are considered dangerous due to extremely unstable mutation.

Very cool. Got a link?

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ymgarl_Genestealer