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I'm working on a short story. In summary, a pretty big Ork battleship has crashlanded on an Imperial Hive World. Battle follows as the planet's PDF is fighting off around 5 thousand Orks who survived the crash. Not a lot of resistance for the PDF who hugely outnumber the Ork invaders. However, the Ork Warboss had a few personal "pets" in his throne room. These pets turn out to be Tyranid Rippers. After the ship crashed, a number of Rippers managed to slip out of the ship using the ensuing chaos as cover, and ran off into the dense forests surrounding the nearby Hive city.

While the PDF and Orks were busy fighting each other, the Rippers fed on local fauna, grew and reproduced. After a certain amount of time, swarms of Tyranids pour out of the forests and attack the Hive city, engaging both Orks and the PDF by surprise.

How plausible is this situation? Are Tyranids capable of growing their numbers to army size from a few stranded rippers? How long would it take for a few rippers to grow into a decent sized swarm?

Rippers do not reproduce. They just devour and then go back and melt into biomass pools. You need said pools. Theortically you need spore chimneys first that will spray spores all around to begin the infestation, but you can skip that part. The rippers could not normally do it themselves without a synapse creature to control them. Maybe the Ork warboss had a bigger package of personal pets?

As for times, hormagaunts/termagants are hyperactive and ephemeral. They can be grown instantly and they have a lifespan of hours, so they are always re-consumed and made anew in the biomass pools. Bigger creatures would be more difficult to make. The more complex the organism the harder it would be. A synapse creature like a warrior would be almost impossible to create without a whole hive tendril or a leviathan to support the command of the Hive Mind. A ravener would be simpler, as it only has animal instincts. Interestingly, bigger things like Carnifexes are not more difficult to make than Warriors, they just need more biomass. so if your reapers happen to fall upon a forest infested with life I could see the story shaping.

Hmm I don't know it it's possible especially in a small amount of time. The tyrannids whole shtick is then hive mind. When they operate independently of the hive mind (bar genestealers and lictors) they revert to a primal state, feeding and hunting. Normal Tyranids don't really breed, rippers certainly don't. They are created by Norn Queens/tervigons, reusing the biomass they harness from consumed worlds. But, tyranids are also very good at evolving, how about one of the rippers being a new variant or something? Something similar to the doom or malantai, red Terror etc. Maybe possessing psychic powers or something and having a close connection to the hive mind, it has the ability to independently fuction away from the hive fleet and gather biomass to reproduce. Maybe it even influenced the orks causing them to crash into the planet?

Just some ideas, I don't want to seem like I'm hijacking your original concept. You could just say feth it and run with your original idea, stranger things happen in this universe...

I do not think Rippers are capable of independent reporduction.
Also the AdMech have out attritioned the Tyranids before, so their reproduction can't be that fast in general.

Extremely, in fact it happens quite a lot.

The Anphellion Project campaign is about an Inquisitor who kept some 'gaunts in captivity. Some escaped, and within a month or two the Tyranids wiped out the installation and gave battle to the Imperial relief force using everything from Genestealers to Hive Tyrants to Hierophants.

At one point the Leviathan tendril attacking the Octarius Ork empire was wiped out in space, but one of the ships managed to fling some spores at the planet Ghorala. The Tyranids conducted a hit and run campaign until they could build up enough biomass to swarm properly, conquered the planet and produced new Hive Ships to leave the world. The entire tendril was reborn and went on to decimate the majority of the Octarius empire (before being wiped out again on the core world by Ghazzy).

There's also an Ork Warlord who keeps a nest of Raveners in his ships hold, releasing them onto planets in advance of his own invasions. This suggests that Raveners at least are able to lay eggs (or reproduce by some other means) on their own. Hormagaunts have been documented doing that too.

In short, absolutely. If any race can come back from the brink as you describe (and fast) it's Tyranids. Orks are extremely good at it too, but they tend to be less subtle than a Tyranid force that knows its on the ropes.

krakentendrilswarm wrote:
Extremely, in fact it happens quite a lot.

The Anphellion Project campaign is about an Inquisitor who kept some 'gaunts in captivity. Some escaped, and within a month or two the Tyranids wiped out the installation and gave battle to the Imperial relief force using everything from Genestealers to Hive Tyrants to Hierophants.

At one point the Leviathan tendril attacking the Octarius Ork empire was wiped out in space, but one of the ships managed to fling some spores at the planet Ghorala. The Tyranids conducted a hit and run campaign until they could build up enough biomass to swarm properly, conquered the planet and produced new Hive Ships to leave the world. The entire tendril was reborn and went on to decimate the majority of the Octarius empire (before being wiped out again on the core world by Ghazzy).

There's also an Ork Warlord who keeps a nest of Raveners in his ships hold, releasing them onto planets in advance of his own invasions. This suggests that Raveners at least are able to lay eggs (or reproduce by some other means) on their own. Hormagaunts have been documented doing that too.

In short, absolutely. If any race can come back from the brink as you describe (and fast) it's Tyranids. Orks are extremely good at it too, but they tend to be less subtle than a Tyranid force that knows its on the ropes.

I think they evolve, which takes a decent amount of time. I'm pretty sure they don't breed, the bodily functions to facilitate breeding would make these organisms less effective soldiers which is entirely the point of them, something like that is an alien concept to the nids

Orks already have rippers. Most people know them as squigs.

Yeah female Termagants (the majority) lay eggs, as do Hormagaunts who are all female by comparison.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Orks already have rippers. Most people know them as squigs.

Never got retconned did it? Haha that awesome, squigs, for anyone that doesn't know, are what happened when nids tried to use the heavily encoded ork dna, what got produced was more ork than nid, orks found some when they boarded a hive ship, recognised them as orky and took them home, they have since spread though out the orks culture and are indeed orky.

Or though I suppose there could be a Genestealer cult in the hive, so may be able to provide assistance to the nids

If reproduction is a concern, one alternative is to make the Ork "battleship" a Nid Hiveship that was captured and properly orkified. When crashed the orks lost control of the ship and it started generating Nid forms again.

As a reference Iron Warriors used a controlled hiveship (via nannovirus I think but not positive) in Storm of Iron.

 Frazzled wrote:
If reproduction is a concern, one alternative is to make the Ork "battleship" a Nid Hiveship that was captured and properly orkified. When crashed the orks lost control of the ship and it started generating Nid forms again.

As a reference Iron Warriors used a controlled hiveship (via nannovirus I think but not positive) in Storm of Iron.

That sounds both hilarious and cool

The efficiency rating and food conversion rate of the tyranid hyve is not inside the scope of any of the Tyranid fluff that I have encountered.

BaconUprising wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If reproduction is a concern, one alternative is to make the Ork "battleship" a Nid Hiveship that was captured and properly orkified. When crashed the orks lost control of the ship and it started generating Nid forms again.

As a reference Iron Warriors used a controlled hiveship (via nannovirus I think but not positive) in Storm of Iron.

That sounds both hilarious and cool

Given the collective psychic power of the Orks, the Hive mind might have met its match - I have this image of an ork warphead with his staff shoved in the ships 'brain' pulling it left and right to steer it and the hive mind trying to steer it in a different direction

and an ork doc about 20 feet away (don't want to get too close to a warphead) cutting into the brain with a rusty hacksaw.

I think the more important issue is how an ork captured a creature that routinely eats capital ships for meals.

BaconUprising wrote:

krakentendrilswarm wrote:
Extremely, in fact it happens quite a lot.

The Anphellion Project campaign is about an Inquisitor who kept some 'gaunts in captivity. Some escaped, and within a month or two the Tyranids wiped out the installation and gave battle to the Imperial relief force using everything from Genestealers to Hive Tyrants to Hierophants.

At one point the Leviathan tendril attacking the Octarius Ork empire was wiped out in space, but one of the ships managed to fling some spores at the planet Ghorala. The Tyranids conducted a hit and run campaign until they could build up enough biomass to swarm properly, conquered the planet and produced new Hive Ships to leave the world. The entire tendril was reborn and went on to decimate the majority of the Octarius empire (before being wiped out again on the core world by Ghazzy).

There's also an Ork Warlord who keeps a nest of Raveners in his ships hold, releasing them onto planets in advance of his own invasions. This suggests that Raveners at least are able to lay eggs (or reproduce by some other means) on their own. Hormagaunts have been documented doing that too.

In short, absolutely. If any race can come back from the brink as you describe (and fast) it's Tyranids. Orks are extremely good at it too, but they tend to be less subtle than a Tyranid force that knows its on the ropes.

I think they evolve, which takes a decent amount of time. I'm pretty sure they don't breed, the bodily functions to facilitate breeding would make these organisms less effective soldiers which is entirely the point of them, something like that is an alien concept to the nids

They probably don't breed by default, but the fluff is full of examples of Tyranids increasing their numbers when you really think they shouldn't be able to. For all we know, if broods are isolated then some of them might go full parthenogenesis and start churning out viable eggs.

As for Tyranid evolution, it can happen really (really) fast if they want it to. They've all got some code in them to stimulate rapid changes to their physiology (this was actually how they killed the Leviathan tendril attacking Tarsis Ultra; they hacked the code with a virus and caused the Tyranids to mutate so rapidly that they all died).

Anything is possible.

icn1982 wrote:

BaconUprising wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If reproduction is a concern, one alternative is to make the Ork "battleship" a Nid Hiveship that was captured and properly orkified. When crashed the orks lost control of the ship and it started generating Nid forms again.

As a reference Iron Warriors used a controlled hiveship (via nannovirus I think but not positive) in Storm of Iron.

That sounds both hilarious and cool

Given the collective psychic power of the Orks, the Hive mind might have met its match - I have this image of an ork warphead with his staff shoved in the ships 'brain' pulling it left and right to steer it and the hive mind trying to steer it in a different direction

and an ork doc about 20 feet away (don't want to get too close to a warphead) cutting into the brain with a rusty hacksaw.

Exactly. think of the hilarious fluff before they get there, then once it lands as the ship humorously tries to eat the ork crew.
You could even use this for modeling effects:

*Terrain: orkified nid ship bits for "hills," broken open bits for "buildings" etc.
*Army you could include a bunch of Nids for vehicles etc. Instead Ork killa kans could be orks riding nidlike creatures orkied up with metal bits and controlled with Three Stooges type chains or other contraptions. Etc. Etc.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
I think the more important issue is how an ork captured a creature that routinely eats capital ships for meals.

Where there is an ork will there is a way.

Trapped the ship by setting super orky sized zappers in an asteroid field for example. Nid ship lured into field and KZZAP(TM) there you go.
Alternatively the Orks just wished it, and Mork (or was it Gork) popped that sucker would a good old fashioned hit from a warp being sized hammer.

You know, I'm starting to like this idea.

 Frazzled wrote:

icn1982 wrote:

BaconUprising wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If reproduction is a concern, one alternative is to make the Ork "battleship" a Nid Hiveship that was captured and properly orkified. When crashed the orks lost control of the ship and it started generating Nid forms again.

As a reference Iron Warriors used a controlled hiveship (via nannovirus I think but not positive) in Storm of Iron.

That sounds both hilarious and cool

Given the collective psychic power of the Orks, the Hive mind might have met its match - I have this image of an ork warphead with his staff shoved in the ships 'brain' pulling it left and right to steer it and the hive mind trying to steer it in a different direction

and an ork doc about 20 feet away (don't want to get too close to a warphead) cutting into the brain with a rusty hacksaw.

Exactly. think of the hilarious fluff before they get there, then once it lands as the ship humorously tries to eat the ork crew.
You could even use this for modeling effects:

*Terrain: orkified nid ship bits for "hills," broken open bits for "buildings" etc.
*Army you could include a bunch of Nids for vehicles etc. Instead Ork killa kans could be orks riding nidlike creatures orkied up with metal bits and controlled with Three Stooges type chains or other contraptions. Etc. Etc.

For a long time now I've wanted to make an army of Looted Tyranids.

Basically it would be mainly Zoanthropes with Meks riding on their heads with joysticks/controls wired into the 'thropes' brains, with hordes of lesser bugs just following the psychic orders

Loot the Hive Mind. Loot the Swarm.

Ynneadwraith has the way of it!

That's horrifying! Don't loot my children. Where are the animal rights activists when I need them?

That being said, for the holidays I am not opposed to seeing a team of eight looted scythed heirodules pulling a sleigh with a big mek and his bag of goodies for all the good little grotz.

You guys reminded me of this (not mine BTW)
http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2009/9/11/52756-Conversion,%20Looted,%20Orks,%20Tyranids,%20Warhammer%2040,000.jpg

Yes!