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 oldravenman3025 wrote:
While these are interesting points to be sure, you have lost me here. I was, more or less, responding to the topic of the thread. Not comparing Humanity and the Tyranids.


As for your question, you are thinking of psychic nulls. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica generally ranks them from Phi-plus (your average "Blank") to the super-rare Omega-minus (among which include Culexus Assassins and Sororitas Inconcessus/Sisters of Silence ). Blanks, also known as "Untouchables", are those who possess a recessive form of the so-called "Pariah Gene". Normal folks normally shrug off the effects of the Blank's "otherness" as the person being simply odd, weird, or having a standoff-ish air about them. Psykers, on the other hand, know when they are around by the feelings of discomfort, and the fact that their abilities will be "nullified" in the general vicinity of said Blank. The most terrifying (to psykers) are the "Pariahs" (or "Blacksouls"), whose aura of otherness is so strong that even baseline Humans react negatively to them. And they have the capability of incapacitating, or even killing, psykers just by their presence, or by siphoning a psyker's energy to the point of death. The Sisters of Silence and Culexus were/are made up entirely of powerful Pariahs.

There were also singular examples of other kinds of nulls, like the "Black Pariah" and "Protiphage". But they were one-off types and haven't popped up (that I know of) since the Heresy.

What is noteworthy is that if you gather enough Blanks and Pariahs in a given location, it creates an effect similar to the Hive Mind's "Shadow in the Warp". (which happened once on Terra back during the Great Crusade, which caused the Navis Nobilite and other psyker-using agencies of the Imperium to freak the hell out, call for laws banning nulls, and for their extermination as "dangerous mutants")

Right, obviously they're not EXACTLY like humans, but there are similarities, not just differences.

One of those differences is how they reproduce. When they need a new organism, they simply genetically engineer it for their purposes. They thus never needed to invent guns, they just created organisms with biological attacks that kill from range. They never needed to invent spaceships, they just created organisms that can travel between star systems. They can basically create any organism they need to, with perfect obedience to the hive mind, because they can create the brain, too.

ANY organism.

You know, like humans. Their genestealer cults have sampled our DNA, and they took some good ideas from human biology, but they didn't simply copy it.

If they wanted to, they could create an entire race of humans whose only difference from ordinary (no sense saying "ACTUAL" when they literally are humans down to the DNA level, is there?) humans is that they obey the Tyranids instead of the Imperium. Imperial citizens sometimes do that anyways for one reason or another, in genestealer cults.

But they didn't. They keep creating different types of Tyranids, instead of Orks, or any sort of other creature they come across, taking the best from whatever they find, but not copying anything.

Ever wonder what that might mean about what Tyranids think about humans in terms of our actual capabilities?

Ever wonder what the fact that they've been wiping out everything they come across without ever bothering to copy humans should imply about the idea that humans are the best at anything? Forget not being perfect, we're not even the best. Tyranids could make an army of humans who all fought for the Tyranids. They didn't. They made Tyranids, despite knowing everything there is to know about humans.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:
Actually I'm a Callidus assassin and I'm here to kill this Commissar for giving choices to guardsman, clearly this is some sort of nefarious heretical plan.

Okay, cool, but do you have to say it first? Couldn't you kill the Commissar first and explain it later?

How did you pass Assassin school without learning not to warn your targets you're going to kill them prior to killing them?

 Pouncey wrote:

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:
Actually I'm a Callidus assassin and I'm here to kill this Commissar for giving choices to guardsman, clearly this is some sort of nefarious heretical plan.

Okay, cool, but do you have to say it first? Couldn't you kill the Commissar first and explain it later?

How did you pass Assassin school without learning not to warn your targets you're going to kill them prior to killing them?

He's actually an eversor assassin.

 n0t_u wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:
Actually I'm a Callidus assassin and I'm here to kill this Commissar for giving choices to guardsman, clearly this is some sort of nefarious heretical plan.

Okay, cool, but do you have to say it first? Couldn't you kill the Commissar first and explain it later?

How did you pass Assassin school without learning not to warn your targets you're going to kill them prior to killing them?

He's actually an eversor assassin.

I don't know the different assassins well enough to remember which is which other than that Vindicare is the sniper.

What are you telling me about Eversors that makes the difference relevant enough to be worth making the distinction?

 Pouncey wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:
Actually I'm a Callidus assassin and I'm here to kill this Commissar for giving choices to guardsman, clearly this is some sort of nefarious heretical plan.

Okay, cool, but do you have to say it first? Couldn't you kill the Commissar first and explain it later?

How did you pass Assassin school without learning not to warn your targets you're going to kill them prior to killing them?

He's actually an eversor assassin.

I don't know the different assassins well enough to remember which is which other than that Vindicare is the sniper.

What are you telling me about Eversors that makes the difference relevant enough to be worth making the distinction?

Yep



They have the subtlety of a shotgun in a knife fight. Less typical assassin and more drugged up raging beserker.

 n0t_u wrote:
They have the subtlety of a shotgun in a knife fight. Less typical assassin and more drugged up raging beserker.

I'm a fan of that artist's works actually.

It's just, I mean, everyone's going to know there's an Eversor assassin in your base anyways. They'll probably figure it out from all the gunfire and screaming. And everyone in the area dies, so striking fear into a population isn't going to be more effective by announcing you're there. If any survivors can know you said that, they probably recorded it on some sort of microphone or camera, which means they also recorded all the gunfire and screaming and messy, messy deaths.

So, like, why are you telling people you're gonna kill them, before you kill them? What good does that ever do? They can't do anything with that information after they're dead, which is your plan for the immediate future.

I mean, when assassins IRL who decide to murder politicians do it from a range close enough that the politician can hear what they're saying, they only say things like, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." for the benefit of the other people watching who are not going to die after the intended assassining is going on, assuming all goes to plan (and if you think your plan is at all likely to fail, then just, like, pick a different plan before doing anything?). The reason they don't simply wait until after and explain after being arrested is because people who do things like that generally expect to be killed immediately afterward by the retaliatory gunfire from the nearby bodyguards. I mean, technically, if you wanted to, you could kill the US President, or the Canadian Prime Minister, and it's not even THAT difficult to do it, as far as skills go. It's just that the people who can do that tend to be very skilled and well-trained in killing people, and they generally understand that if you do something like that, what happens afterwards is that they, the assassin, are either killed by bodyguards or hunted the feth down mercilessly and executed or put in prison for life, depending on whether the country has the death penalty or not. Then the country that hired them gets obliterated from the map, and the UN will NOT save them. You saw what the world did to Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11? Yeah, even Canada supported the US enough there to supply our own troops. Lots of countries did. Basically that level of retaliation, so no one does it, because few people are THAT crazy, and most of them aren't good enough that you can hire someone to do it for you.

With an Eversor, everyone in the immediate vicinity is going to die. They don't just kill the commander and their advisors, they take out EVERYONE. And anyone who watched it happen from a recording device is already going to know who did it and how awful it was for the people who died by the time it's all over and the area is safe enough to go retrieving footage in.

If the goal is to create fear of these assassins, I think the friggin gory mess of the entire command center's corpses is good enough at that. Eversor assassins don't need to SAY anything too, do they?

I'm not sure they're even able to say anything when drugged up enough to be sent out.

 n0t_u wrote:
I'm not sure they're even able to say anything when drugged up enough to be sent out.

Okay... Then how could you announce what kind of assassin you are, who you're here to kill, and why you've been sent to kill them?

Especially that last part. Imperial assassins aren't told that part, and they don't care, either.

Nids just kills you

 Pouncey wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
I'm not sure they're even able to say anything when drugged up enough to be sent out.

Okay... Then how could you announce what kind of assassin you are, who you're here to kill, and why you've been sent to kill them?

Especially that last part. Imperial assassins aren't told that part, and they don't care, either.

They generally don't, I was originally making a point for the lack of subtlety which is the eversor's speciality.

 Bishop F Gantry wrote:
Nids just kills you

So does spilling an oil drum full of sulfuric acid on yourself, for whatever reason. The acid just kills you, without any malicious intent to cause you any suffering or even to kill you at all.

As does being struck directly by a falling meteorite that hits you in the head with enough force to cause you, personally, instant death. It just kills you.

I think the particulars are important enough to make more of a difference than whether the intent is simply to kill or to cause immense suffering. The weapons that a species creates when it cares as little about the deaths and suffering of individuals as Tyranids... I mean, in the Ender's Game series, a species like that existed. They were kinda like humans. They had no malicious intent or desire to see anything die, but they simply didn't care if any individuals died because they were an insectoid hive mind, not a collaboration of individuals.

They finally met their first humans, in space. Both fleets were curious to learn about the capabilities of the other. The humans, valuing the lives of individuals and assuming others did the same, opted to scan the alien fleet with non-invasive sensors and extrapolate their capabilities from there from what they were able to learn from sensors designed specifically to avoid killing things when you want to learn about them.

The aliens, on the other hand, not valuing the lives of individuals enough to develop any tools or methods like scanners, and until they learned that humans differed in that opinion, simply assuming humans did the same thing, opted to not harmlessly scan the human fleet, but to take a more direct approach of having their ships open fire on the human vessels, to have each of the two fleets battle to the death, because they assumed that humans, like them, would gladly welcome the deaths of those individuals to learn something valuable for their species. They had no intention of ever wiping out humanity when they opened fire, it was just the best way to learn about what we could do in a fight.

Imagine Star Trek where instead of saying, "Worf, do not open fire on those Romulans, instead scan their ship." Literally just replace all orders to scan an unknown vessel with an order to "Open fire, let's see what they can do in a real fight."

Humans were so offended by the aliens doing their equivalent of a harmless sensor scan to determine the capabilities of an unknown vessel, they tried to exterminate an entire alien species because they mistakenly believed they were in a war for their very survival. And the aliens fought, and lost that war, dying by the trillions, wondering why the hell the humans were so pissed off, and what they ever did to deserve this.

Watch the movie Ender's Game and see what humans would do to an alien species whose only significant diffference from humans is that they are a hive mind and humans are not. They encounter a new species, they want to learn about it, not wipe it out.

Did you watch the movie?

So then you watched the human military trick a child into exterminating an entire alien species that was simply defending its territory against aggressive human fleets decades after learning why the first war even started and decided to simply pull so far out of human territory that they assumed humans would decide to not launch an unprovoked attack of their own, because no humans were being killed anymore.

Because that first war happened because humans retaliated, HARD, against what they mistakenly believed was intended as an attack. And the aliens simply retaliated against a hostile, aggressive species that responded aggressively to being scanned, and because the aliens were more advanced, they were winning that war, which actually WAS a fight for their survival. Then they learned why humans were so pissed off in the first place, and actually understood humans well enough to recognize that they didn't view that first encounter the same way they did. As clueless as the humans were, the aliens were equally clueless. When the aliens found out, because they're a hive mind, they didn't need to communicate anything. They simply retreated far enough out of human territory to never come in contact with a human fleet again.

Humans mostly never learned the truth. Because instead of trying to understand a different point of view, they simply wiped out an entire species over a legitimate misunderstanding that resulted in people dying in a situation where no one was being hostile. Well, almost. One human did learn the truth, because he understood different points of view. His name was Ender. His ability to understand a diffferent point of view is why he was effectively genetically engineered to KILL that alien species by learning enough about them to understand how to kill them. He wasn't really able to live with himself afterward, and became a recluse. He spent so much time traveling on relativistic spaceships that he was still alive over a thousand years later, because of relativity. He was an old, old man then, but still alive. And he found a surviving alien queen, and because he understood them, he hid her from other humans, and found a planet where she might recreate her species in peace.

Even a thousand years later, having won that war and believing the species extinct, humanity was so unforgiving of those aliens that they effectively tried to kill them on sight after discovering that a species they thought they wiped out a thousand years earlier had actually survived.

I wonder if the people who boycotted the author's books even READ any of them first.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 n0t_u wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
I'm not sure they're even able to say anything when drugged up enough to be sent out.

Okay... Then how could you announce what kind of assassin you are, who you're here to kill, and why you've been sent to kill them?

Especially that last part. Imperial assassins aren't told that part, and they don't care, either.

They generally don't, I was originally making a point for the lack of subtlety which is the eversor's speciality.

By doing so, you are actually OVERSTATING an Eversor's subtlety. An Eversor wouldn't even bother to explain afterwards, and it's not so much because they want to be subtle, but because there's no point because everyone who could hear it is either going to die very shortly or is already dead.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Bishop F Gantry wrote:
Nids just kills you

So does spilling an oil drum full of sulfuric acid on yourself, for whatever reason. The acid just kills you, without any malicious intent to cause you any suffering or even to kill you at all.

As does being struck directly by a falling meteorite that hits you in the head with enough force to cause you, personally, instant death. It just kills you.

I think the particulars are important enough to make more of a difference than whether the intent is simply to kill or to cause immense suffering. The weapons that a species creates when it cares as little about the deaths and suffering of individuals as Tyranids... I mean, in the Ender's Game series, a species like that existed. They were kinda like humans. They had no malicious intent or desire to see anything die, but they simply didn't care if any individuals died because they were an insectoid hive mind, not a collaboration of individuals.

They finally met their first humans, in space. Both fleets were curious to learn about the capabilities of the other. The humans, valuing the lives of individuals and assuming others did the same, opted to scan the alien fleet with non-invasive sensors and extrapolate their capabilities from there from what they were able to learn from sensors designed specifically to avoid killing things when you want to learn about them.

The aliens, on the other hand, not valuing the lives of individuals enough to develop any tools or methods like scanners, and until they learned that humans differed in that opinion, simply assuming humans did the same thing, opted to not harmlessly scan the human fleet, but to take a more direct approach of having their ships open fire on the human vessels, to have each of the two fleets battle to the death, because they assumed that humans, like them, would gladly welcome the deaths of those individuals to learn something valuable for their species. They had no intention of ever wiping out humanity when they opened fire, it was just the best way to learn about what we could do in a fight.

Imagine Star Trek where instead of saying, "Worf, do not open fire on those Romulans, instead scan their ship." Literally just replace all orders to scan an unknown vessel with an order to "Open fire, let's see what they can do in a real fight."

Humans were so offended by the aliens doing their equivalent of a harmless sensor scan to determine the capabilities of an unknown vessel, they tried to exterminate an entire alien species because they mistakenly believed they were in a war for their very survival. And the aliens fought, and lost that war, dying by the trillions, wondering why the hell the humans were so pissed off, and what they ever did to deserve this.

Watch the movie Ender's Game and see what humans would do to an alien species whose only significant diffference from humans is that they are a hive mind and humans are not. They encounter a new species, they want to learn about it, not wipe it out.

Did you watch the movie?

So then you watched the human military trick a child into exterminating an entire alien species that was simply defending its territory against aggressive human fleets decades after learning why the first war even started and decided to simply pull so far out of human territory that they assumed humans would decide to not launch an unprovoked attack of their own, because no humans were being killed anymore.

Because that first war happened because humans retaliated, HARD, against what they mistakenly believed was intended as an attack. And the aliens simply retaliated against a hostile, aggressive species that responded aggressively to being scanned, and because the aliens were more advanced, they were winning that war, which actually WAS a fight for their survival. Then they learned why humans were so pissed off in the first place, and actually understood humans well enough to recognize that they didn't view that first encounter the same way they did. As clueless as the humans were, the aliens were equally clueless. When the aliens found out, because they're a hive mind, they didn't need to communicate anything. They simply retreated far enough out of human territory to never come in contact with a human fleet again.

Humans mostly never learned the truth. Because instead of trying to understand a different point of view, they simply wiped out an entire species over a legitimate misunderstanding that resulted in people dying in a situation where no one was being hostile. Well, almost. One human did learn the truth, because he understood different points of view. His name was Ender. His ability to understand a diffferent point of view is why he was effectively genetically engineered to KILL that alien species by learning enough about them to understand how to kill them. He wasn't really able to live with himself afterward, and became a recluse. He spent so much time traveling on relativistic spaceships that he was still alive over a thousand years later, because of relativity. He was an old, old man then, but still alive. And he found a surviving alien queen, and because he understood them, he hid her from other humans, and found a planet where she might recreate her species in peace.

Even a thousand years later, having won that war and believing the species extinct, humanity was so unforgiving of those aliens that they effectively tried to kill them on sight after discovering that a species they thought they wiped out a thousand years earlier had actually survived.

I wonder if the people who boycotted the author's books even READ any of them first.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 n0t_u wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
I'm not sure they're even able to say anything when drugged up enough to be sent out.

Okay... Then how could you announce what kind of assassin you are, who you're here to kill, and why you've been sent to kill them?

Especially that last part. Imperial assassins aren't told that part, and they don't care, either.

They generally don't, I was originally making a point for the lack of subtlety which is the eversor's speciality.

By doing so, you are actually OVERSTATING an Eversor's subtlety. An Eversor wouldn't even bother to explain afterwards, and it's not so much because they want to be subtle, but because there's no point because everyone who could hear it is either going to die very shortly or is already dead.

And the alternative is Chaos, death by gribbly bits still more attractive

You guys remember that this is the internet right? Its obvious that assasin is from the vanus temple. An evissor wouldnt have anything like the patience waiting for dakka to load and a calidus would have already left after killing the comissar making it look like someone else did it. The vanus temple would use the forums alerting the local inquisitors that there was the heresy of a comissar giving choices to guardsmen in the area!

 sudojoe wrote:
You guys remember that this is the internet right? Its obvious that assasin is from the vanus temple. An evissor wouldnt have anything like the patience waiting for dakka to load and a calidus would have already left after killing the comissar making it look like someone else did it. The vanus temple would use the forums alerting the local inquisitors that there was the heresy of a comissar giving choices to guardsmen in the area!

Does Dakka still exist as a thing by then though?

If i fight the daemons, do I have the option to switch sides and pledge myself to one of the gods? Either way I'll go daemons because I'd feel better having grey knights around.

 Pouncey wrote:

 sudojoe wrote:
You guys remember that this is the internet right? Its obvious that assasin is from the vanus temple. An evissor wouldnt have anything like the patience waiting for dakka to load and a calidus would have already left after killing the comissar making it look like someone else did it. The vanus temple would use the forums alerting the local inquisitors that there was the heresy of a comissar giving choices to guardsmen in the area!

Does Dakka still exist as a thing by then though?

It was a line in the book Titanicus but what it said was the mechanicus never deletes anything! Though they may sequester quite alot of things

I would pick Tyranids.

In both situation i'm likely to die, but helping evacuate people from the battlefield, there's an immediate purpose to it. I could see the gratification on the faces of the people i'm saving.

And hey, if things get really fethed, maybe in the heat of battle i can just hop on one of the transports with the refugees.

But the comforting part about this universe is that there is the concept of a soul. So, taking the Tyranids, I know that my soul will find rest after i'm dead; I can't make the same claim regarding a battle with demons in the warp.

Probably Chaos because if I'm going out either way it'd be awesome to see/work-with an elite, professional team like the Grey Knights. That's a memory in and of itself.

Take them out though (so I'd fight Chaos with other Guardsmen) and I'd probably pick Tyranids. Better chance of survival and better chance for a non-sucky afterlife.

I pick Chaos. If matters came to dire straights I could barter with them to survive. Nids, nope as it is all about the nom.

 sudojoe wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 sudojoe wrote:
You guys remember that this is the internet right? Its obvious that assasin is from the vanus temple. An evissor wouldnt have anything like the patience waiting for dakka to load and a calidus would have already left after killing the comissar making it look like someone else did it. The vanus temple would use the forums alerting the local inquisitors that there was the heresy of a comissar giving choices to guardsmen in the area!

Does Dakka still exist as a thing by then though?

It was a line in the book Titanicus but what it said was the mechanicus never deletes anything! Though they may sequester quite alot of things

Did Dakka survive to the days of the Mechanicus then?