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So, this has been discussed before; the Hive Mind is like a psychic, intergalactic internet, and has no need to be totally centrally powered. But if we want to take this internet analogy further, the modern internet has individual computers connected to servers and those servers are connected to other servers. Then information is passed back down the line and rinse and repeat. Now bear with me; my tyranid fluff is weak.

So, how does this work for Tyranids, now? the gaunts and warriors and stuff are managed by synapse protocols of bigger bugs and specialized psychic bugs, but all of this has to connect to some even bigger bug somewhere. Then all the tyranids in the galaxy answer to what, exactly? is it all eventually just one huge zoanthrope hanging out in the dead of space somewhere? i find it hard to believe that the hive mind exists only in name and the tyranids are acting purely on gestalt impulse. There has to be some intelligent planning going on somewhere.

Why have centralized intelligence. Gak is weak. Have dispersed intelligence, so that they can't destroy you without total extermination. The more nids there are, the bigger the sitw, true, but even one nid has the signature of all the nids. If you killed them to a gaunt: he would hide and breed and feed. The nids would rize again. They'll never get that far though. The scattered intelligence is too far along to get sucked into a trap like that. Imo at least.

I was under the impression that the Hivemind is like a set of pre-defined protocols, like what actions the different Tyranid species would take according to circumstances. Like a TCP/IP connects would have the TCP handle the compilation, for a lack of a better word, of the data stream, which includes the sender/receiver info and more, and then the TCP is included in the IP datagram, which handles the "delivery" of data. Furthermore the program known as sockets, which manages the connects from one client to another (assuming this is P2P).

In this, each Tyranid Organism is akin to a program, which, when properly triggered, functions according to inputs or, if when without them, to a set of pre-defined rules. While not at all an accurate analogy, smaller creatures are given a level of autonomy because the Hivemind, being a hypothetical server, does not have the resource to manage every single network clients a programs. Thus the clients (computers connected to the network) have their own CPUs and OS to resolve data inputs independently. Larger synapses creatures serve, in a sense, like the internet providers we have who resolve lower level requests, delivering data and high-level commands to the lower-level clients (non-synapses organisms), and possibly upload compiled new data to the server.

But the data aren't stored in a single place, it's feasible that they store data in a sense similar to the way we do for commercial servers -- multiple storage devices (that's fancy talk for HDDs or in some cases, SSDs) and managed by a program which, by splitting the data into smaller chunks and storing chunks of data in separate drivers and making sure each driver also stores part of the data found on other drivers, the program makes sure the storage unit has a good level of redundancy and can thus recovery data lost should one of the drivers literally die. In this way each large Tyranid organism having the capacity for long-term memory and problem-solving serve as the driver that maintain and update the protocols (Hivemind) across spaces.

And the Hive Mind is nothing more than the protocol that manages all these. By spreading the undated programs across all storage-capable units in the network, the Hivemind is always updated and, as long as a set of Tyranid Organism whose sum of their protocols is the whole of the Hivemind protocal, never dies.

Although this is just my hypothesis, for all I know the Hivemind is the spawns of the schizophrenic nightmares of a demented Old One brain stored in the jar of a 11-year-old boy's toy box collecting dust in his wealthy father's adamentium-sealed basement beneath his luxurious apartment complex on Terra.

" There has to be some intelligent planning going on somewhere. "

If you want to read a novel with a 'Nid main character , set squarely or solely in a 'Nid context or 'Nid society, then yes.

Otherwise, no.

You can write a lot about , and there's lots to study, in viruses, Bubonic Plague, tornadoes and earthquakes, hammers and pliers, and paper cuts.
But NOT motive, meaning, sympathy or empathy.

To return to what I eluded to previously ; IF it is even possible to write an intelligible novel about a 'Nid main character , set squarely or solely in a 'Nid context or 'Nid society, who would want to write it or read it ?
I guess SOMEWHERE someone reads telephone directories cover to cover voluntarily, for fun ? But......

'Nids are like viruses, Bubonic Plague, tornadoes and earthquakes, hammers and pliers, and paper cuts.
That is , they are system, process, effect.
End of story.

There must be a story-line ? A point ( even in fiction ) ?

Well, some folks who fetishize systems do like to obscure that point......

The plan is the perpetuation of the species.

As stated earlier, they are like a virus. The idea of a giant zoey floating around comes up every once in a while but it is just from people trying to bring things more in line with how the human body works. We think that there must be a leader who is pulling the strings because we have leaders who pull strings. The hive mind is the collective though. So really, ALL nids everywhere are like ONE organisum. There is no one big bug who knows all. They are all the one big bug.

So, this has been discussed before; the Hive Mind is like a psychic, intergalactic internet, and has no need to be totally centrally powered. But if we want to take this internet analogy further, the modern internet has individual computers connected to servers and those servers are connected to other servers. Then information is passed back down the line and rinse and repeat. Now bear with me; my tyranid fluff is weak.

So, how does this work for Tyranids, now? the gaunts and warriors and stuff are managed by synapse protocols of bigger bugs and specialized psychic bugs, but all of this has to connect to some even bigger bug somewhere. Then all the tyranids in the galaxy answer to what, exactly? is it all eventually just one huge zoanthrope hanging out in the dead of space somewhere? i find it hard to believe that the hive mind exists only in name and the tyranids are acting purely on gestalt impulse. There has to be some intelligent planning going on somewhere.

All of the lower Tyranid life-forms are the individual PCs in the bot-net. Synapse creatures are varying stages of server infrastructure. Interconnected in this manner, the workstations receive only the instructions they need, and this also holds true for all of the Synapse Creatures, top to bottom. Everything is on a "need to know" basis... and is maintained in the cloud.

There is no single, central server-system administrating overall control. The Tyranid fleets are the Hive-Mind, and the Hive-Mind is the Tyranid Fleets.

There is no need of a "central bug" for intelligence. I mean, think of brains. We are, after all, nothing more that the gestalt intelligence created by the communication of our neurons, and yet we are individuals. The Hive Mind is simply a massive individual.

 KesaAnna wrote:
" There has to be some intelligent planning going on somewhere. "

If you want to read a novel with a 'Nid main character , set squarely or solely in a 'Nid context or 'Nid society, then yes.

Otherwise, no.

You can write a lot about , and there's lots to study, in viruses, Bubonic Plague, tornadoes and earthquakes, hammers and pliers, and paper cuts.
But NOT motive, meaning, sympathy or empathy.

To return to what I eluded to previously ; IF it is even possible to write an intelligible novel about a 'Nid main character , set squarely or solely in a 'Nid context or 'Nid society, who would want to write it or read it ?
I guess SOMEWHERE someone reads telephone directories cover to cover voluntarily, for fun ? But......

'Nids are like viruses, Bubonic Plague, tornadoes and earthquakes, hammers and pliers, and paper cuts.
That is , they are system, process, effect.
End of story.

There must be a story-line ? A point ( even in fiction ) ?

Well, some folks who fetishize systems do like to obscure that point......

The Hive Mind has been a character in some stories. It is after all an intelligent being and has motives (survival and nomnoming). But there is no "Nid society", it is only one massive being.

Although there is the exception of Genestealers, which are actually intelligent individuals with emotions, a society, etc. Maybe Lictors could also be like that, after all they are also supposed to be able to work outside the Hive Mind.

The best way I have seen it described I that the hive mind is a pan galactic warp god that, instead of condensing into a individual entity like khorne or slanesh is all the tyranids instincts and drives at once, to such an extreme that it overrides and forces the body's to it's bidding.

Consider it like this. What I khorne didn't sit on his skull throne. What if instead he WAS every warrior. All at once. A warp god made manifest in millions of bodies in the physical world. That's the hive mind. A warp god with an endless host for a form.

Lance845 wrote:


Consider it like this. What I khorne didn't sit on his skull throne. What if instead he WAS every warrior. All at once. A warp god made manifest in millions of bodies in the physical world. That's the hive mind. A warp god with an endless host for a form.

Sounds good.

Makes sense to me.

One in many, many are one. " I am legion. "

There are a lot of theories as to what the hive mind is and who or what drives it, some Imperial scholars think that an Old One survived the long war hundreds of centuries ago and with that time built an alien race, using them as a weapon controlled by the "hive mind" and others think that the Tyranids are just a really really really dreadfully smart intergalactic alien race that managed to build its own psychic network to avoid the warp and its influences. Regardless, if memory serves me correcrly, each Tyranid splinter fleet (which there seems to be growing numbers of) is controlled by the hive mind through norn queens. Each hive fleet has several norn queens I believe, and since norn queens reproduce the countless nids in a fleet, those nids respond psychically to the queen that created them. But, who knows who or what the norn queens recieve their synaptic influence from.

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
There are a lot of theories as to what the hive mind is and who or what drives it, some Imperial scholars think that an Old One survived the long war hundreds of centuries ago and with that time built an alien race, using them as a weapon controlled by the "hive mind" and others think that the Tyranids are just a really really really dreadfully smart intergalactic alien race that managed to build its own psychic network to avoid the warp and its influences. Regardless, if memory serves me correcrly, each Tyranid splinter fleet (which there seems to be growing numbers of) is controlled by the hive mind through norn queens. Each hive fleet has several norn queens I believe, and since norn queens reproduce the countless nids in a fleet, those nids respond psychically to the queen that created them. But, who knows who or what the norn queens recieve their synaptic influence from.

Norn queens are awesome. They also don't currently exist in the fluff.

I'm almost completely sure they do, they are mentioned in the 5th ed codex and they should be mentioned on the 6th ed one considering it is a 99% copy of the 5th ed one.

 Tyran wrote:
I'm almost completely sure they do, they are mentioned in the 5th ed codex and they should be mentioned on the 6th ed one considering it is a 99% copy of the 5th ed one.

Have 6th, read it back and forth. never heard of the norn queens until I found a wiki article on them.

Lance845 wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
I'm almost completely sure they do, they are mentioned in the 5th ed codex and they should be mentioned on the 6th ed one considering it is a 99% copy of the 5th ed one.

Have 6th, read it back and forth. never heard of the norn queens until I found a wiki article on them.

Huh, you are right. Still they are mentioned in the 5th edition and in several stories and novels. They are still part of the fluff. Specially because GW's policy of "everything is canon".

Norn queens were mentioned in the 2nd and 3rd codicies iirc.

Yeah, Norn Queens have been around forever (since Aliens, at least) but were not, afaik, actually confirmed to exist until relatively recently. They were always a point of theory/suspicion on the part of the Imperium.

 Tyran wrote:
I'm almost completely sure they do, they are mentioned in the 5th ed codex and they should be mentioned on the 6th ed one considering it is a 99% copy of the 5th ed one.

If they don't exist in the 6th ed codex, but haven't been retconned by anything that would directly contradict them, I reckon they still exist, at least until something else makes them not. Its a shame, though because that is some awsome fluff.

Norn queens don't exist in the game because they don't participate in combat. They spawn nids and direct new evolution, new Tyranid species but they do not fight. They just sit stationary on hive ships doing what they do best, spawning gak.

Pretty sure there is a novel where some Ultramarines infiltrate a hive ship to go kill a Norn Queen, which I guess means they do exist in the fluff...

Also, a single Gaunt surviving would not be able to repopulate the Nid race. I'm reasonably sure they don't even have proper digestive organs as they are not meant to survive long, and given they are not synaptic I see no reason why one would somehow be able to repopulate the entire species. A single Norn-Queen surviving would likely be the level at which the race could re-grow, though given their tactics of throwing themselves at the foe it would require some strategic re-evaluation (ie stop going for worlds like Macragge...).

As for the Hive Mind itself, it doesn't have any form that we know of. It's a collective consciousness. In the Leviathan dataslate fluff it is treated like a character, which implies it is a sentience as opposed to just a set of commands governing the behaviour of its minions. However, the fact that there are differing Hive Fleets suggests there is some degree of segmentation/autonomy to lower levels - otherwise all Nids would be exactly the same colours.

Benlisted wrote:
Pretty sure there is a novel where some Ultramarines infiltrate a hive ship to go kill a Norn Queen, which I guess means they do exist in the fluff...

Also, a single Gaunt surviving would not be able to repopulate the Nid race. I'm reasonably sure they don't even have proper digestive organs as they are not meant to survive long, and given they are not synaptic I see no reason why one would somehow be able to repopulate the entire species. A single Norn-Queen surviving would likely be the level at which the race could re-grow, though given their tactics of throwing themselves at the foe it would require some strategic re-evaluation (ie stop going for worlds like Macragge...).

As for the Hive Mind itself, it doesn't have any form that we know of. It's a collective consciousness. In the Leviathan dataslate fluff it is treated like a character, which implies it is a sentience as opposed to just a set of commands governing the behaviour of its minions. However, the fact that there are differing Hive Fleets suggests there is some degree of segmentation/autonomy to lower levels - otherwise all Nids would be exactly the same colours.

There is definetely a form of autonomy, as Hive Fleets are also known to not recognise and get into conflict with each other.

I would imagine that it's false logic to compare the Nid Hive mind to the simplicity of the internet protocols. We need a neuralogist neurosci..person who specializes in studying human brains because I think to better explain the Hive Mind we'd have to do a direct comparison the much more complex mechanisms of a fully sentient self aware intelligent learning brain. The synapses are firing in the hive mind but on a grander scale then what's bottled in the human cranium.

IIRC the majority of the Tyranids haven't arrived in the milky Way yet. What we have are just vanguard tendrils. So for all we know there could be a massive Zoanthrope in darkspace controlling everything.

I picture it like a Pyramid of authority with the smarter bioforms hacking the minds of the stupider bioforms or broadcasting some kind of psychic signal which gives them direction.

Yeah but each is a temporary organic structure. Once they fullfill their task on the planet they get munched up by the rippers too and the big tyrants walk themselves into the biosludge pools to turn back into goo. Mind, if I recall, the Tyrants are the only ones that will keep being reformed with their previous experiences and memories intact. Aside from the Queens it appears the Tyrants also play a lynchpin role in the overall character of the Hive Mind due to this memory retention.

Isn't the Swarmlord the only one thought to retain memories? or are we assuming that because he's just a big hive tyrant all of them can do it?

All Hive Tyrants can retain memories and the hive mind sometimes spawns a hive tyrant whose strategies proved quite useful against a certain kind of foe, it's the fluff behind the old adversary trait you can get for your hive tyrant.

No the Swarmlord isn't the only one despite it being an elite tyrant. Or are we assuming that because there is a Tyrant form bigger then the other Tyrants they lose their memory retention? All the Tyrants are essentially immortal in that they will be reincarnated with experiences intact. The Swarmlord's reincarnation differs in that it is a stress triggered event when a planetary defence is proving difficult. The epitome of the Tyrant form, a master tactician sent to crush the resistance. But that doesn't negate all the other Tyrant's ability to retain their experiences.

Benlisted wrote:

Also, a single Gaunt surviving would not be able to repopulate the Nid race. I'm reasonably sure they don't even have proper digestive organs as they are not meant to survive long, and given they are not synaptic I see no reason why one would somehow be able to repopulate the entire species. A single Norn-Queen surviving would likely be the level at which the race could re-grow, though given their tactics of throwing themselves at the foe it would require some strategic re-evaluation (ie stop going for worlds like Macragge...).

Gaunts can develop a digestive system if needed after all there are occasions where the Tyranids are cut off from reinforces and they need their troops to last longer. And Norn Queens aren't the only Tyranids capable of reproduction. For example it's common for Hormagants to reproduce and there are many other means for the Tyranids to reproduce.