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 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

as has been noted elsewhere, the 'nid fluff stinks. Obviously written by people with no concept of how organisms work or what the universe is made of. Why would Tyrandis eat the atmosphere(mostly nitrogen and oxygen) and not eat the rock (mostly oxygen and silicon)
Why wouldnt they harvest gas clouds in space?
If they can utilize fusion and fission, why cant they make anything they want out of energy?

If 'biomass' means living things, perhaps it makes sense. They eat the entire atmosphere and oceans to get at every living thing on the planet. Churning through trillions of tons material to get at a few million tons of microbes. Perhaps they are unable to make certain amino acids at a suitable rate and need to eat them.

Yeah the more you think about it, the less the whole 'biomass' thing makes any sense.

I personally love the idea that they're sifting through all these organisms' genetic codes for novel and interesting adaptations. The 'nids are entirely about adaptation and competition (often between Hive Fleets) to create the most effective hunting organisms. It'd make sense if their main goal was to seek new and novel genetic structures that they can repurpose. It would also neatly explain how they're able to adapt their own genetic structures so quickly without an apparent 'science department'.

In my headcanon, the whole 'they must be coming here to digest biomass' is just the most widely accepted theory of the 'nids from the eminent minds in the Imperium. The ignorance makes sense if it's coming from an in-universe perspective.

I just had a clever thought reading these. Clearly the Nids aren't interested in fuel, but something else...



What if they aren't here for the biomass, per se, but rather for life? Not so much the biological components that make up the parts, but that spark that gives creatures, animals, and sentients life? Like the Tyrnaids are looking for souls, but not in the traditional, literal sense of souls like what Chaos looks for, but whatever that "spark" of life is, that is their goal? Not to blindly consume, but to purposefully take "life" into its larger self. That by not focussing on the "biomass", the Hivemind wants living things for the Tyranid collective.

What if this massive hunger isn't a literal hunger of wanting a filled stomach, but that it might be a thirst for literally life itself? In the same vein that Chaos gods want souls and followers, the Hivemind is seeking to control life itself? It is this driven psychic force with a desire to control all life as if it were a god?

Just an idea

 BunkhouseBuster wrote:
I just had a clever thought reading these. Clearly the Nids aren't interested in fuel, but something else...



What if they aren't here for the biomass, per se, but rather for life? Not so much the biological components that make up the parts, but that spark that gives creatures, animals, and sentients life? Like the Tyrnaids are looking for souls, but not in the traditional, literal sense of souls like what Chaos looks for, but whatever that "spark" of life is, that is their goal? Not to blindly consume, but to purposefully take "life" into its larger self. That by not focussing on the "biomass", the Hivemind wants living things for the Tyranid collective.

What if this massive hunger isn't a literal hunger of wanting a filled stomach, but that it might be a thirst for literally life itself? In the same vein that Chaos gods want souls and followers, the Hivemind is seeking to control life itself? It is this driven psychic force with a desire to control all life as if it were a god?

Just an idea

Which is where the outsider Theory also fits in. As the C'tan consume souls/life force since they were encased into their living metal bodies, The necroty that were transformed into the necrons souls were consumed, by the C'tan during this process.

It also makes the Doom of Mal'tai more plausible Nid character

They're not running, they're like moths they were first alerted to the galaxy through the Pharos device, thanks to reboot and this guy.


Once here they're attracted to the astronimican. The hive mind being a hive mind allows the other fleets to know of this and follow. From memory it was hinted they were running from something around 4th ed, but that's also around the time where necrons were more cthuluesque so it's likely just a hook used to be like "oo what if there's something wayyy worse out there you guys *waves hands around*"; merely it's to add more grimdark to the background.