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In a scenario where a single hive ship, or a Tyranid-infested space hulk, somehow deposited its contents on a planet that was inhabited by some other sentient race, what happens? There's some synapse creatures, so they have a link to the hive mind, but if they're just on the planet, how do they reproduce, rearm, etc? What would their goals be?

They set up spawning chambers through some magical tyranidosity and hide until they can build up sufficient numbers to take over. Also start preying on the local.fauna and flora to get any interesting local genetic fun and games or to overcome any local constraints (c.f. the Anphelion Project). Spore chimneys probably come into it as well to tyrannoform the planet and generally take over everything.

Yup. Anphelion Project is basically this story. They go from having small samples of genestealers, hormagaunts, termagants and warriors in jurasic park style electric fence pens to full on bio titans with flying hive tyrants, mawlocs, raveners, shrikes, gargoyles, etc... overrunning the moon or whatever.

Not to mention, this is pretty much the entire reason for the Lictor's existence.

Is Anphelion Project a short story? Maybe I should read up on this.

It would not be difficult for Tyranids to include stem cells containing all relevant genetic material for other strains within each organism. Any Tyranid war-form could reasonably contain hundreds of cells from every Tyranid bioform we know of. Real life organisms can have tens of thousands of cells and still be microscopic. Presumably the Hive Mind could access such stem cells if needed and have whatever organism it wants vomit up a 'seed' for a spawning pool then go from there. If I were the Hive Mind I'd prep every synapse creature with a few stem cell bundles for the purpose. Such organisms are already relatively large and complex so it wouldn't be much extra energy or biomass.

And that isn't even getting into genestealers.

Anphelion project was the 4th imperial armor book. It includes stuff for the red scorpions chapter as well. The book is out of print but pdfs are easy enough to find.

It also depends what survives.

Genestealers are a whole strain designed as being both a shock/terror troop and also as an infestation unit. They won't start making pools to breed other Tyrainds, but will instead seek to infest the local population. Basically setting the seeds for a Genestealer Cult to rise up. Once that cult starts to rise up and gain power it has a mental draw that should attract nearby hive fleets attention. The idea being that as the cult reaches critical mass and starts to overtly overthrow the planets rulers; the hive fleet should arrive to a weakened world with poorer defences.


Other breeds will adopt other patterns of behaviour. We've had loan units like Old One Eye simply survive on their own; through to the afor mentioned situation of a hive steadily growing in power before rising up.



In general Tyranids have, form what I can tell, three responses.

1) Hide/hibernate. Basically they aren't strong/able to increase numbers so they basically go into hibernation and hide.

2) Infest local population

3) Grow a new hive cluster and build an army



I believe old Tyranid lore did have the Ripper as a general seed unit. One capable of gorging itself and then mutating into other strains as required. .

Are Ripper Swarms not even a thing anymore?

Hecaton wrote:
Are Ripper Swarms not even a thing anymore?

They stopped selling the models on their own years ago and instead shifted to putting them on model sprue. So now a good few Tyranids have a few rippers in the pack and they appear in gaunt sprue. For some reason though GW doesn't really advertise them on the product pages visually like they do with scarabs for Necrons. Rippers are still very much a part of the Tyranids.

Just for more exemplar stuff:
in the Ciaphas Cain Novel "Duty Calls" (contained in the Omnibus "Defender of the Imperium") [warning, heavy spoilers]:

There’s some examples of the opposite happening, the ‘nids becoming part of the local fauna. The Catachan devil is said to be a tyrranid life form that adapted to the local conditions. They’ve since more or less de-evolved (“gone feral”) and are no longer part of the hive mind. There’s also examples of tyranids from long before Behemoth entered the galaxy (predating it by a few thousand years at least). So who knows how many tyranids descendants there are. I’d be intrested to see chaos worlds where tyranids have developed to be chaos corrupted monsters

There’s also the Xenobiologist speculation that the organisms referred to as Rippers aren’t a species/strain unto themselves, but juvenile forms of other species/strains.

If that’s true, that can explain things. It’s also possible they can be matured into specific bio forms - kinda like living stem cells.

Aight, this is all good info. I'm going to be GMing a narrative Kill Team campaign and one of the players is probably going to be playing Tyranids, and I wanted some sensible goals for his strike force of bugs stranded on a world. Thanks guys.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s also the Xenobiologist speculation that the organisms referred to as Rippers aren’t a species/strain unto themselves, but juvenile forms of other species/strains.

If that’s true, that can explain things. It’s also possible they can be matured into specific bio forms - kinda like living stem cells.

While I thematically like the idea, from a logical perspective it doesn't make sense--there is too much to gain from making rippers one-and-done organisms. If a ripper only ever needs to gorge itself then dive into a digestion pool, there are a lot of organs that can he stripped out; the entire digestive system, blood filtration, tissue regeneration, and more can all be stripped out of the organism (and it's genetics) to save a whole bunch of biomass. It is plausible that a ripper trapped and kept in a cage would die within days because that's how long it's lifespan is; no biological effort was spent to let it live longer. That they dive into digestion pools at all rather than vomiting up their payload then returning to feeding suggests such a thing, as if the organism could survive longer that would be a huge waste of energy re-growing a new ripper because the previous one felt suicidal.

But I still like the thematic idea of rippers being swarms of larva so would not exactly be unhappy if someone could prove me wrong...

Not entirely reliable sauce

In certain instances, hive ships have been driven away from a world by its defenders, leaving Tyranid ground forces left behind on the planetary surface isolated from the Hive Mind. In such circumstances, Rippers have been known to burrow below ground and then spend the time using their absorbed biomass to metamorphose into more advanced Tyranid bioforms.

This has led many among the Adeptus Mechanicus' Magi Biologis to believe that Rippers are an immature form of the prime Tyrancii genus.

This would mean that Rippers are theoretically capable of gestating into any other type of Tyranid bioform when given the right signals from the Hive Mind, potentially allowing Rippers to transform into any Tyranid bioform known, from a Hive Tyrant to a Hormagaunt.

Its both. Nids are not just the organisms we see. Spores, mutagens, and microscopic organisms are all a part of a nid invasion. A rippers biology is purpose built. But that doesnt mean they dont have what amounts to dormant viruses inside them waiting to be triggered and inject new dna strands to convert biomass to other purposes.

!! Were is that from?

Edit; responding to Mad Dok

Pretty much what orks would do, minus the physical "teknol'gee" stuff. Survive, expand, strengthen, set up a biological support system and take the planet.

 Lance845 wrote:
Its both. Nids are not just the organisms we see. Spores, mutagens, and microscopic organisms are all a part of a nid invasion. A rippers biology is purpose built. But that doesnt mean they dont have what amounts to dormant virjses inside them wakting to be triggered and inject new dna strands to convert biomass to other purposes.

Good point.

...

Now I want models where rippers fuse together and grow into a huge meta-organism.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
!! Were is that from?

Edit; responding to Mad Dok

I can’t remember if it was Anphelion Project, or an old Codex? But it’s definitely GW published, rather than fanon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It’s also entirely possible that Ripper Swarms include Rippers and larval stage examples of other genus.

That is my own fanon, as it explains both behaviours fairly neatly.

Yeah, that does make sense; have a fraction of rippers be 'stem cell organisms' for the advantages there, while the majority are 'throwaway' rippers for biomass efficiency.

Hecaton wrote:
Aight, this is all good info. I'm going to be GMing a narrative Kill Team campaign and one of the players is probably going to be playing Tyranids, and I wanted some sensible goals for his strike force of bugs stranded on a world. Thanks guys.

Sounds like this could be a very cool campaign. Good luck!

 Nerak wrote:
There’s some examples of the opposite happening, the ‘nids becoming part of the local fauna. The Catachan devil is said to be a tyrranid life form that adapted to the local conditions. They’ve since more or less de-evolved (“gone feral”) and are no longer part of the hive mind. There’s also examples of tyranids from long before Behemoth entered the galaxy (predating it by a few thousand years at least). So who knows how many tyranids descendants there are. I’d be intrested to see chaos worlds where tyranids have developed to be chaos corrupted monsters

I dont think Catachan Devils are actually nids. I'm pretty sure that's in-world rumour. I'd rather believe the most dangerous predator on Catachan is native to it, not just a visitor who got lost. It takes away character from both Catachan and the Catachan Devils themselves

Tyranid Codex are full of Imperial scientist reports trying to work out Tyranids. So they do get things wrong. Devils are a theorised to be ancient scouts from the Tyranid fleets that went native.

Ripper is also a bit of an imprecise generic term used by Imperials to refer to the smaller feeding organisms of the Tyranid ground swarms. In 2nd edition, they looked more like giant centipedes/worms. Since 3rd edition, they have been the current form. Forgeworld made some flying versions.

Chances are given the mutability of Tyranids, that what exactly constitutes Rippers can vary from fleet to fleet.

Sherman Bishop (who got some of his ideas effectively incorporated into 3rd edition Tyranids) had a website of his own and on it he said Imperial scientists had observed some Rippers vomiting up the contents of their stomachs into digestion pools instead of diving in to be dissolved. So the idea may be only semi-canonical but it does open up the possibility that in some circumstances it may be more economical/efficient overall for the Rippers to live longer and go for seconds rather than just diving in and dissolving. Growing new Rippers takes energy, and there would be energy losses in constantly growing new Rippers only for to dissolve them again after one stomach's worth of consuming.

It is worth noting that singel genestealers try to overtake a planet much like lord dracola tryes to overtake transylvania. They are the sources of GSC.

The Ghorala Swarm story that has been in the Tyranid codexes since 5th edition (I think) seems to be exactly what you are looking for. It features one scout Hive Ship managing to break through an Ork ship blockade and land some forces on the planet before it is destroyed, which then have to start fighting ambush warfare because they are so heavily outnumbered by the Orks.

They use the dead Orks to start building up their numbers, along with prioritising Lictors in order to destabilise the Ork command structure. Eventually they end up defeating the Orks and consuming the planet to build new Hive Ships and move on.