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I have read the Anphelion project in which the inquisition was experimenting on tyranids and know that in Black Fury that Fabious Bile was experimenting with controlling tyranids (and succedding to a degree), so I am asking is it out of the realm of possibilities to have a xenos inquisitor using tyranids as troops? Maybe with deathwatch/IG back up? If the magos biologis was able to sever the connection with the hive mind via psychic dampner or other mechanical means (remotes) I think it would be possible. I think it would looks really cool and fluffy on the field. I know the allies matrix shuns this notion but would this at least seem feasible? Just toying with creating the fluff and table top army make up. Thoughts and cc appreciated.

I did read something like that once.
I guess its feasible. The tyranids do revert back to simple beasts once severed from the hive mind.

Fluff wise, such inquisitors who do succeed in controlling nids may be considered radical / heretics.
Not sure if the IG would want to work with someone like that.
I think the Deathwatch wouldn't either, as much like how the GK despise inquisitors who consort with demons, the DW probably wouldn't be keen with working with someone who controls aliens.

Being an inquisitor though, he may have his own little personal retinue of lackies and mercs.

I think one of the problems the inq would run into is making more of them.

The average gaunt cant reproduce, and iirc doesnt even have a digestive system. They have to be spawned from bigger bugs. Their purpose is signular, kill something or die trying, then be digested back into biomatter. So if you wanted more than one battle out of them you would need to capture and control (and feed) a tervigon (at least), and even then, very limited to how many they can make. Also, since all the spawning bugs are synapse creatures, severing thier connection to the hive mind may prove very difficult.

All that said, its an open universe and its very big, no one can tell you that your particular inq didnt capture, say one of the nid spawn ships, and locked it behind a psy barrier that cut it off from the hivemind and now uses it to spawn cannon fodder for his own purposes. Dont be surpirsed when another inq tries to kill him for such herasy either.

Your army, go nuts

Thanks for bringing up the reproduction problem, hadn't really thought of that. Trying to address all the angles, so a hive ship would almost be a must in order to facilitate a nid farm. I would imagine some sort of insanely powerful beta+ psycher or some sort mechanicus construct could theoretically do this. Not sure what level the hive ship would rate in on the Assignment scale though.

its technically possible, but only for things like gaunts or rippers. they could do it with psychic fields or possibly radio frequencies and collars. and they would definitely be considered radical. A morel likely line of inquisitorial research would be how to disrupt the evolutionary chain or how to disrupt the hiveminds psychic control.

I like the collars idea, that fits with more of the magos biologis angle. Because you know how the mechanicus have to tinker with everything. Heresy is a fine line!

 mjl7atlas wrote:
Thanks for bringing up the reproduction problem, hadn't really thought of that. Trying to address all the angles, so a hive ship would almost be a must in order to facilitate a nid farm. I would imagine some sort of insanely powerful beta+ psycher or some sort mechanicus construct could theoretically do this. Not sure what level the hive ship would rate in on the Assignment scale though.

I think your assesment is pretty accurate. You would need to physically and psyically confine the ship. I would reccomend that you say it was one of the smallest spawn ships in a fleet that was completly wiped out. The hivemind grows in the streangth the more nids are present. So, hypothically it may be possible for an extemely powerful psyker (who was able to resist the shadow of the warp in the first place, and not go crazy during the inital encounter) to temporarly cripple the nid ship until it could be contained. This would require constant monitoring and culling the population to prevent the ship from producing too many big bugs and overwhelming the containment, you also need to worry about the ship just making a bunch of zoanthropes and crushing your psykers mind. It would also require feeding to produce the bio matter needed to make the little bugs that you are wiring up.

IMHO, I would make this task either very nearly, or actually kill the psyker in question. If he lives the psyker should be completly devoted to containing the mind of the ship. Sorta like the Emp on a smaller scale. Then you have the mechs rig up collars etc to the small ones, either kill or cripple the big ones and find a way to regulate what bugs are made on the ship. Could make an interesting story.

 mjl7atlas wrote:
Thanks for bringing up the reproduction problem, hadn't really thought of that. Trying to address all the angles, so a hive ship would almost be a must in order to facilitate a nid farm. I would imagine some sort of insanely powerful beta+ psycher or some sort mechanicus construct could theoretically do this. Not sure what level the hive ship would rate in on the Assignment scale though.

Some of the most-powerful living psykers in the galaxy have made contact with the Hive Mind and been driven insane, or nearly so. Trying to find a beta-class psyker with the right Disciplines to *constantly* mind-control a Hive Ship is a recipe for disaster.

You also have to feed it, and Hive Ships eat *a lot*. Eventually, another Inquisitor is going to notice that an awful lot of Agri-World shipments are getting diverted (thus causing food riots and uprisings on the Hive Worlds that depend on them, cue Ordo Hereticus and the Adeptus Arbites) which leads said Inquisitor to launching an Inquest to find out where all that food is going. Then you end up with one Inquisitor (and allies) chasing down your radical Ordo Xenos Inquisitor to purge the alien.

You also run into a rules problem with the Tyranids having no allies of any kind, which makes them far less-effective on the tabletop (also they don't have a Synapse Creature on the table, so revert to Instinctive Behavior, I think?). There's a host of actual game-play issues that come along with this.

In 2nd Ed hormagaunts would lay lots of eggs just under the surface, to the extent that they could pose a threat even after the hive fleet has been driven off. I'm not sure if that's still current fluff.

Mallich wrote:
In 2nd Ed hormagaunts would lay lots of eggs just under the surface, to the extent that they could pose a threat even after the hive fleet has been driven off. I'm not sure if that's still current fluff.

In one of the Deathwatch short stories, Kryptman has some captive gaunts, and while dissecting one, he points out the presence of a birthing tract and has some eggs removed, so it's probably still current.

I think IA4 hints at that all tyranids contain tiny spores or some such mechanism that can grow more tyranids if needed. Even one gaunt could potentially cause problems if that's true.

IA4 states outright that the captive Hormagaunts they were studying on Anphelion laid eggs that hatched into larger and more complex biomorphs as they hunted and thrived in the jungle, until a Hive Tyrant spawned, at which point they broke free and killed everyone under its guidance.

With smaller creatures like Hormagaunts and Termagants you have the issue of instinctive behaviour. Termagants will flee and hide, killing anything that gets close. Hormagaunts are like Xenomorphs in that they can reproduce at a startling rate without you knowing, plus, they simply attack the neareat thing, including other Nids, so controlling them both is difficult. Bigger Nids present the same problem but much harder to take out. None can reproduce alone without Synapse creatures like Tervigons or Dominitrices. And on top of that, as soon as they come into contact with the Hive Mind your control is broken, and the range vastly depends on the size of the hive fleet. Leviathan's two tendrils blanketed out everything between them in The Shadow, likely could have had Synapse control in that area too

If that's the case then keeping any tyranids around seems like a really bad idea. Even if you could control the one you have, you could never know if free ones were going to pop up.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
If that's the case then keeping any tyranids around seems like a really bad idea. Even if you could control the one you have, you could never know if free ones were going to pop up.

Keeping nids around for pets doesn't make sense to us mere mortals, but hey, radical inquisitors are known to have bound daemons for allies. Doesn't seem like a bright idea there either but they do it. Just like in the Alien movies, books and comic books, man tries to harness tyranids...err "aliens" to use as a biological weapon but it never pans out for the humans does it!? (Predators have seemed to be able to keep a queen or two on breeding lock down but even they have incidents from time to time (they however live for the incident to happen)). Gaunts carrying eggs and spawning higher tiered nids until a tyrant is born makes a lot of sense biologically. Ensures the spread of the species. The whole "fight fire with fire" philosophy is more or less the foundation for this idea. I appreciate all the thoughts and input.

Tyranid pets worst idea ever. Where did you get that heretical idea from. I have never heard of a creature called tyranid, nor did you. Did you ?

Now promising experiments with local xenos predators also known as hormagaunt is something else.
They will attack anything in sight so the only thing you will need to do is interface with their brains.
This should be easy, if we can steer a cockroach with a few electrodes today. They should be able to steer it in a general direction.

Things will go south once a synapse creature pops up of course, but hey it is worth the risk right.

 mjl7atlas wrote:
" to use as a biological weapon but it never pans out for the humans does it!? (Predators have seemed to be able to keep a queen or two on breeding lock down but even they have incidents from time to time (they however live for the incident to happen)).

Yautja don't keep xenomorphs around to use as bioweapons, they farm them to use in adulthood rituals during which the youngblood has to hunt and kill the Xeno. The rest of the time they leave the Xenomorphs completely alone to breed and take over whatever gakky planet they got dropped on without a care in the world.

Hormagaunts do lay eggs but they are specifically unique in this - the hive mind uses feral hormagaunts as a sort of 'area denial' weapon for this reason. Generic 'bugs' always involve other bugs in their life cycle.

Anphelion was actually studying 'nids to better figure out how to exterminate them - amongst other things, it's the place that the mutagenic acid used in Hellfire rounds was invented.

Controlling 'nids would be a dangerous, dangerous plan, but as noted, they're an organic being so it's not impossible. The safest (a VERY) relative term would be direct augmetic implants - something akin to arcoflagellents or servitorisation - physically slice out the bits of the brain associated with the hive mind synapse link and replace with a more tractable control mechanism. I wouldn't want to do it to anything smart, but hormagaunts breed fast and have a biology well-adapted to be used as killing machines.....

Where is Crablezworth?

*Edit* Inspiration galore
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/650331.page

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 mjl7atlas wrote:
" to use as a biological weapon but it never pans out for the humans does it!? (Predators have seemed to be able to keep a queen or two on breeding lock down but even they have incidents from time to time (they however live for the incident to happen)).

Yautja don't keep xenomorphs around to use as bioweapons, they farm them to use in adulthood rituals during which the youngblood has to hunt and kill the Xeno. The rest of the time they leave the Xenomorphs completely alone to breed and take over whatever gakky planet they got dropped on without a care in the world.

I never said that Yautja used them for biological weapons, (although some clans do, the Killers subclan from the Bad Bloods clan do in fact use xenomorphs as hounds/weapons.) I said " man tries to harness tyranids...err "aliens" to use as a biological weapon but it never pans out for the humans does it!?" every time "man" tries it fails. Still like the concept. Makes for a cool radical xenos inquisitor imo.

 mjl7atlas wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 mjl7atlas wrote:
" to use as a biological weapon but it never pans out for the humans does it!? (Predators have seemed to be able to keep a queen or two on breeding lock down but even they have incidents from time to time (they however live for the incident to happen)).

Yautja don't keep xenomorphs around to use as bioweapons, they farm them to use in adulthood rituals during which the youngblood has to hunt and kill the Xeno. The rest of the time they leave the Xenomorphs completely alone to breed and take over whatever gakky planet they got dropped on without a care in the world.

I never said that Yautja used them for biological weapons, (although some clans do, the Killers subclan from the Bad Bloods clan do in fact use xenomorphs as hounds/weapons.) I said " man tries to harness tyranids...err "aliens" to use as a biological weapon but it never pans out for the humans does it!?" every time "man" tries it fails. Still like the concept. Makes for a cool radical xenos inquisitor imo.

Ironically, I think in the Nid's case, Genestealers would be one of the few actual options for controllable Nids. They have the intelligence to work without the Hive Mind, the strength to be a real threat in small numbers (unlike Gaunts), have stealth and assassin applications. However, I can completely imagine any escape would be exactly like an Alien film. The campaign from Alien Vs Predator 2010 springs to mind. The captive "6" you play as harbours a real resentment towards Weyland. Just imagine the Inquisitor as Weyland and the Xenomorphs as Genestealers.

 Deadshot wrote:

Ironically, I think in the Nid's case, Genestealers would be one of the few actual options for controllable Nids. They have the intelligence to work without the Hive Mind, the strength to be a real threat in small numbers (unlike Gaunts), have stealth and assassin applications. However, I can completely imagine any escape would be exactly like an Alien film. The campaign from Alien Vs Predator 2010 springs to mind. The captive "6" you play as harbours a real resentment towards Weyland. Just imagine the Inquisitor as Weyland and the Xenomorphs as Genestealers.

Yep, except at the end, instead of getting blamm'd by a Predator, you summon a Hive Fleet! Heh.

Oooooooooo ----- what about mind controlling a genestealer cult?!?! Of course, it seems like it would be nearly impossible, but if it wasn't...you solve the reproduction problem. Just implant some genestealer...embryos?...in some members of a penal legion...

It would all end in exterminatus, but it sure would be fun while it lasted.

What's a little exterminatus between friends!?

 Grumblewartz wrote:
Oooooooooo ----- what about mind controlling a genestealer cult?!?! Of course, it seems like it would be nearly impossible, but if it wasn't...you solve the reproduction problem. Just implant some genestealer...embryos?...in some members of a penal legion...

It would all end in exterminatus, but it sure would be fun while it lasted.

That's basically an Alien plot too. Weland-Yutani captures a Xenomorph hive, puts mind control helmets on, requisitions prisoners for "science" offering early release, uses them to breed Xenomorphs.

Even the Dark Eldar Haemonculi have no idea how the Tyranids actually work, and this are the guys that figured how to turn someone in a literal living room.

 Tyran wrote:
Even the Dark Eldar Haemonculi have no idea how the Tyranids actually work, and this are the guys that figured how to turn someone in a literal living room.

Where is this fluff from?

 mjl7atlas wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Even the Dark Eldar Haemonculi have no idea how the Tyranids actually work, and this are the guys that figured how to turn someone in a literal living room.

Where is this fluff from?

From the Harlequin Codex about the DE Haemonculi failure to breed Tyranids.

In Storm of Iron, the Iron Warriors capture a tyranid bioship and convert it into a titan transport.

 mondo80 wrote:
In Storm of Iron, the Iron Warriors capture a tyranid bioship and convert it into a titan transport.

Yes, but for that they drag it to the warp and torture it and finally defeat it using the Obliterator Virus. It is a very long process and the result is a dead husk filled with Obliterator Virus.