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 jreilly89 wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:
Yes, but they touch on the fact that it was created for and influenced by Nurgle. It's only mentioned that it was a weapon created by the Kinebrach, who again are barely touched on.

Nurgle isn't mentioned, but the book does talk extensively about it having to do with Chaos. And of course it's not established that the anathame has anything specifically to do with Nurgle, just with Chaos. Otherwise that would imply the Heresy was Nurgle's doing.

The Kinebrach are probably kept vague on purpose as just another Chaos worshipping civilization (like the Laer and native Cadians). The book was more about the Interax and Imerpium's general ignorance of Chaos anyway.

Agreed, I just think a little more explanation would have helped. I visualised the Kinebrach as developing extremely advanced technical weapons rather than having ties to Chaos. Hence why I thought the Anathame (also, kind of a dumb name, I would have gone with Anathema) worked on a subatomic level as opposed to dark spooky magic.

Let's be honest here, it would be a pretty strange piece of technology that developed a sub-atomic virus custom-tailored to a person based on their name, of all things. That would be like having an axe that opens a worm hole to a different location based on the user's bank balance or something. If it was purely mechanically/technologically based, the name would be irrelevant.

 EngulfedObject wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:
Agreed, I just think a little more explanation would have helped. I visualised the Kinebrach as developing extremely advanced technical weapons rather than having ties to Chaos. Hence why I thought the Anathame (also, kind of a dumb name, I would have gone with Anathema) worked on a subatomic level as opposed to dark spooky magic.

Yea, it's been a while since I read the book but reading up on the fluff on the wikia and lexicanum is leaving me more confused than before. The Kinebrach aren't mentioned as Chaos worshipping, just having the anathame. Interesting... time for a reread!

And maybe part of the reason why the fluff is so vague is because False Gods has a different author, so the story took a different turn. The Interex are also barely mentioned again, whereas the first book seemed to be building up to something major.

The Kinebrach probably didn't worship Chaos. The Interex surely would have done something more extreme than integrate them into their society. My best guess would be they didn't fully understand what they were working with but never got to the point of corruption? Possibly? This is 40/30K we're talking here though. lol

 HeraldofDisease wrote:
The Kinebrach probably didn't worship Chaos. The Interex surely would have done something more extreme than integrate them into their society. My best guess would be they didn't fully understand what they were working with but never got to the point of corruption? Possibly? This is 40/30K we're talking here though. lol

Well, there's the example of Farsight and his vampiric blade so it might be possible. Wouldn't make as much sense if they actively developed the weapon though. That would imply an understanding of how it works or at least the powers behind it.

Just saying, the Anathame is one example of how Chaos wouldn't do well on Tyranids. As shown by Know No Fear, Chaos is symbolic which is why swords and fire work better than huge guns against Daemons. The Anathame works by naming a person, but the Tyranids lack names. They are all mindless drones part of a larger collective. Even the likes of the Swarmlord and Old One Eye are just designations by the Imperium and classifications. The only one it might affect is Deathleaper because it was a name given to it by highly superstitious, religious people so their belief in the name makes it a name.

 Deadshot wrote:
Just saying, the Anathame is one example of how Chaos wouldn't do well on Tyranids. As shown by Know No Fear, Chaos is symbolic which is why swords and fire work better than huge guns against Daemons. The Anathame works by naming a person, but the Tyranids lack names. They are all mindless drones part of a larger collective. Even the likes of the Swarmlord and Old One Eye are just designations by the Imperium and classifications. The only one it might affect is Deathleaper because it was a name given to it by highly superstitious, religious people so their belief in the name makes it a name.

What makes you think the Chaos Gods couldn't make something like an Anathame that only worked on those without names? Or with the colour purple somewhere on them? Or more than five teeth? All of those are just as absurdly specific. The whole point of Chaos, is that it's magic. It's warpcraft. It needs no logic, no designated physics. As long as the warp is sufficiently strong, and the Gods sufficiently interested, there's very little they cannot do.

As such, if there's a big enough warp portal open on a world, and the Big Four actually give a damn, I suspect Nurgle could quite easily brew a disease that would melt any Tyranids, or Slaanesh a noise that interferes with the Hive Minds control, or Tzeentch a fog that gives hallucinations to Tyranid creatures, etcetc. It all comes down to whether or not the Shadow in the Warp is strong enough to sever the warp connection, or at least weaken it enough that the Tyranids on the ground don't all just keel over and submit to whatever warpcraft is inflicted on them.

So to go back to the OP's question, if the Nurgle world is covered in portals, has swamps infested with daemons, and billions of nurgle worshippers and zombies staggering about, I suspect that the Tyranids would need a pretty vast fleet in order to weaken the warp connection to the stage that they'd have a chance of invading successfully. On the flip side, if it's just a normal world with a bit of geographically specific Nurglish taint from a leaky webway, it wouldn't take much of a Hive Mind presence at all to sever the connection.