Sentience level of vanguard Tyranids

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**kabaakaba**

Trying to understand how sentient vanguard Tyranids like genestealers and all sorts of lictors.
Even we know that main goal is consume world is there milestones which requires free will from bioform to deal with? Or there hive mind in control too? Like nake GSC cult. Is it genestealers who control infected? Or lictor killing exact targets who can affect invasion?

**Iracundus**

They are intelligent enough to make their own decisions independently from the Hive Mind (since they are far ahead of the fleets).

However the decisions they make are effectively going to help the Tyranids because they will act to infiltrate and undermine the society they find themselves in. A Lictor will have enough intelligence to differentiate between a high value target and a low value target that would not achieve much except draw attention to itself. It has enough self-control and restraint to conceal and bide its time instead of just mindlessly lashing out and killing a pointless low value target and attracting the attention of authorities.

**kabaakaba**

Nice. Did brain sucking/eating still a thing? Can lictor eat some guy get knowledge, hunt next one who knew more, an so on till found idk governor?

**JNAProductions**

kabaakaba wrote:
Nice. Did brain sucking/eating still a thing? Can lictor eat some guy get knowledge, hunt next one who knew more, an so on till found idk governor?

Marines can do that, so I would be SHOCKED if a Tyranid Vanguard couldn't.

Lictors even have a rule to gain CP upon eating a Character.

**Overread**

Death Leaper and Neurolictors are built on the idea of eating brains so its still very much there.

As for intelligence and sentience its complicated partly because we don't exactly know how the Hive Mind works.

What we can say is that Tyranids are created with the intelligence they need for their duty in the swarm. Also its important to realise that even lowly gaunts are not entirely stupid, they are simply very feral in nature so are closer to a hunting animal level of intelligence.
They are designed to operate in vast swarms and to be part of a greater whole and take direction from higher intelligence organisms. So they don't need a lot of higher functioning planning capacity because that's being handled elsewhere. They just need to be intelligent enough to fight and be an effective predator.

For vanguard creatures designed to operate "beyond the will of the hivemind" they are very intelligent. Easily comparable to humans if not greater in some cases. They just also think about things very differently. Genestealers will found Genestealer Cults and a Patriarch will arise to guide the whole Cult like its own personal swarm.

Part of what makes lictors scary is that they can operate fully on their own in the vanguard toward complex goals and targets. IT makes them entirely different to deal with than a gaunt.
Of course the lictor is still thinking like a Tyranid; its goals, motivations, instincts and all are utterly Alien and its motivation and actions might be toward goals that we can't easily comprehend since the Swarm might well be taking a very large picture view of the situation.

**Iracundus**

A Lictor's motives aren't that alien. Everything it does is ultimately to learn more about and weaken the enemy in order to make things easier for the rest of the Tyranids to eventually win. Each individual Lictor may make its own decisions about how to accomplish this but they have some understanding of things like morale, fear, and valuable objectives being protected by the enemy. That is how a Lictor snuck into the Blood Angels' fortress on Baal and made a deliberate decision to bypass the geneseed storage facilities in order to go after the shield generator in order to collapse the shield holding back the rest of the Tyranid assault. Once there, the Lictor, like all Tyranids, has no self-preservation instinct and is perfectly willing to sacrifice itself in order to accomplish its objective.

The Tyranids actually have very basic understandable motives. The Hive Mind and more complex creatures can have high intelligence but they use this intelligence to achieve basic, primal objectives of feeding, survival, reproduction. All their complex behaviors and actions are bent towards this primal goal.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

It’s really hard to say.

First, how are we defining sentience? Certainly they’ve less free will than their prey. An Ork, Eldar or Guardsman always have, to a great or lesser degree, a choice in whether to bother at all. Sure they’d be consequences for such a dereliction, but an option it remains. But Tyranids? No such option.

A Lictor does what a Lictor does. It can’t do anything else. But. It does seem to have some capability to assess a situation and adapt to it.

Genestealers appear to be able to work simple mechanisms, such as doors and levers. It’s doubtful whether they truly comprehend what’s doing, but they’ve still that option over simply tearing their way through it, all the better to avoid detection.

It’s even debatable whether the overarching Hive Mind is truly sentient, and not just Instinct Gone Nanners.

Outside of very early Rogue Trader stuff, starting with Mercenary Tyranid Warriors and Zoat Emissaries, there’s nothing to show any Hive Fleet ever doing anything beyond “find biomass, subdue biomass, devour biomass”.

Some may go about it with different preferences, but the ends are the same. No negotiation. No truce. No discussion. No contact. Just endless travel and consumption upon arrival.

It’s not even clear just how its rapid evolution actually works. Sure, we see its benefits (ref Chitin more resistant to Tau Pulse Fire), but not the mechanism. Does the Hive Mind actively analyse and then specifically develop? Or is it just more just noticing a certain brood took longer, and making more, essentially relying on Chance Mutation rather than careful, measured design?

**kabaakaba**

Who control GSC brood? There is no Hive mind around. I mean GS cult do complex things.

**Iracundus**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s really hard to say.

First, how are we defining sentience? Certainly they’ve less free will than their prey. An Ork, Eldar or Guardsman always have, to a great or lesser degree, a choice in whether to bother at all. Sure they’d be consequences for such a dereliction, but an option it remains. But Tyranids? No such option.

A Lictor does what a Lictor does. It can’t do anything else. But. It does seem to have some capability to assess a situation and adapt to it.

Genestealers appear to be able to work simple mechanisms, such as doors and levers. It’s doubtful whether they truly comprehend what’s doing, but they’ve still that option over simply tearing their way through it, all the better to avoid detection.

It’s even debatable whether the overarching Hive Mind is truly sentient, and not just Instinct Gone Nanners.

Outside of very early Rogue Trader stuff, starting with Mercenary Tyranid Warriors and Zoat Emissaries, there’s nothing to show any Hive Fleet ever doing anything beyond “find biomass, subdue biomass, devour biomass”.

Some may go about it with different preferences, but the ends are the same. No negotiation. No truce. No discussion. No contact. Just endless travel and consumption upon arrival.

It’s not even clear just how its rapid evolution actually works. Sure, we see its benefits (ref Chitin more resistant to Tau Pulse Fire), but not the mechanism. Does the Hive Mind actively analyse and then specifically develop? Or is it just more just noticing a certain brood took longer, and making more, essentially relying on Chance Mutation rather than careful, measured design?

The Hive Mind is sentient and self-aware. The following is from the short story Wraithflight by Guy Haley. The POV is Iyanna using her psychic senses while fighting a hive fleet. While an in-character POV and thus potentially fallible, it does pretty strongly point towards the Hive Mind as an intelligent entity:

Beyond the shield she saw the Great Dragon’s true form. Not the hideous intrusions into the mortal realm that swam the black star sea, nor as a Farseer might see it, as a great and braided cable of malicious fate dominating all the skein. The first was merely a part of the whole, the second psychic abstraction. What Iyanna instead saw was the reality of its soul.

It was a great shadow when seen from afar, a wave of dread and psychic blindness that preceded the hive fleet’s arrival. But the greatest shadows are cast by the brightest lights, and seen closely, the soul of the hive mind shone brighter than any sun.
She was so close now that she perceived the ridged topography of its mind, larger than star systems, an entity bigger than a god. It contemplated thoughts as large as continents, and spun plans more complex than worlds. It dreamed dreams that could not be fathomed. She felt small and afraid before it, but she did not let her fear cow her defiance.

Against this vista flickered the souls of eldar, their jewel-brightness dimmed by the incomparable glare of the Great Dragon. And this was but a tendril of the creature. The bulk of it stretched away, coils wrapped tight about the higher dimensions, joining in the distance to others, and then others again, until at a great confluence of the parts sat the terrible truth of the whole. She stared at its brilliance. Unlike her passionless dead warriors, who felt nought but the echoes of wrath at the sight, she was fascinated by the beauty on display. She thought, if only such a thing could be tamed it would drive out She Who Thirsts forever. If only its hunger was for things other than the meat and blood of worlds…

She ceased her speculation. Such an entity was entirely other, inimical to all life but its own, a giant animal intent only on its prey. There was no thought to its doings, no intellect. It was cunning. It exhibited signs of an emergent, mechanical intelligence, as evolution might appear to possess if sped to the rate of change the hive mind evinced. But there was no true intelligence to it. The hive mind was non-sentient.

...

She had the sense of an eye, slave to a great power. An intellect that dwarfed the Great Wheel of the galaxy. She opened her second sense, to find the Dragon looking at her with terrible regard. For aeons it seemed it held her in its gaze. And there was fury in that examination. The Dragon was angry, and it was angry with her. Not with the galaxy, or this sector, or her species. But with her personally. The promise of endless torment came from it, her very being enslaved to its ends and used against others, her body rebuilt over and again so that it might suffer the Dragon’s revenge.

So from this story, it seems Iyanna was mistaken in thinking the Hive Mind had no true intelligence or sentience. Though the Hive Mind normally does not seem to concern itself with individual enemies, it seems to have noticed and formed a particular vendetta (or so Iyanna at least perceives) after Iyanna scores yet another victory against the Tyranids. Iyanna's repeated presence at Iyanden victories over Tyranids seems to have been noticed.

We also see an example of the Hive Mind also doing more than just spawning more of some surviving strains in Warriors of Ultramar. The Imperium manages to get a success hurling a refinery platform into the midst of the hive fleet and detonating it like a giant bomb when one of the hive ships starts to attack it and eat it. This destroys the hive ship and temporarily throws the fleet into confusion. When the Imperium tries to repeat the same tactic at the next planet with another refinery platform, the hive fleet does not take the bait. The hive ships stay safely clear of the potential explosion radius, while specialized ship-creatures with strong tentacle arms latch onto the refinery platform and begin hauling it back towards the Imperial fleet. In desperation the Imperial fleet tries to fire on the refinery but the Tyranids protect the refinery by hurling sacrificial cannon fodder drone ships into the shots and deploying creatures with sail like projections that dissipate and weaken lance beams striking them so that the beams are too attenuated and weak to penetrate the refinery. Finally when the refinery is in the middle of the Imperial fleet, the tentacled ships hauling the refinery turn and bore into the refinery with armor piercing beaks and detonate the refinery, devastating the Imperial fleet. The Hive Mind had learned the Imperial tactic from observation and then reacted, preparing specialized organisms and a plan to counter a repeat of the refinery bomb tactic.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

On the Iyanna quote?

Even relatively unintelligent predators can bear a grudge, or victimise something specific.

Of course, it could be that the Hive Mind is just so vast, it’s a level of sentience that we just cannot fathom. I mean, if a bacteria was aware it was being studied in a microscope, how could it possibly comprehend what we are? How complex and aware our minds are compared to itself.

Thanks for the quote! Always love to see stuff for the first time. Spesh when it challenges my existing understanding.

**Insectum7**

kabaakaba wrote:
Trying to understand how sentient vanguard Tyranids like genestealers and all sorts of lictors.
Even we know that main goal is consume world is there milestones which requires free will from bioform to deal with? Or there hive mind in control too? Like nake GSC cult. Is it genestealers who control infected? Or lictor killing exact targets who can affect invasion?

From Tyranid Codex, 2nd edition:
"The Patriarch is at least as intelligent as a human, and it's human thralls allow it to infiltrate and work against human society. The Patriarch projects the psychic emanations that hold the brood together, and it is this growing signal-beacon of the brood mind that draws the Tyranids to vulnerable human worlds. The Patriarch itself remains quite unaware of this and probably understands nothing of its role in the Tyranid expansion."

Also from Tyranids 2nd edition, about Genestealers: "[they] never use ranged weapons or other devices, despite their obvious intelligence. Genestealers can operate independently of the hive mind, having a gestalt brood intelligence of their own."

From codex Genestealer Cults, 8th edition "their secondary limbs are typically shaped like gnarled hands, allowing genestealers to manipulate objects, climb, and even operate simple devices such as touch panels."

And there you have it! The Patriarch (which was once just a normal Genestealer) has it's own sentience and intelligence, and creates it's own local psychic domination. But at the same time it is ignorant of the greater Hive Fleets until they get closer. Once the fleet gets closer the Patriarch and it's other Genestealers come under the dominion of the arriving fleet. Seems like normal Genestealers are reasonably smart, but shun tools. It's hard to say exactly how "smart" they really are, and it looks like they grow in intelligence upon becoming a Broodlord/Patriarch, along with their other physical changes.

. . .

Re: Lictor intelligence/sentience: Codex 4th edition
"They are intelligent and possess highly developed sensory organs so they can see, smell, hear, and taste their prey long before it becomes aware of their presence. They appear to be a highly adapted mutation of the Tyranid Warriors and are highly adapted to survive in hostile environments in a stalker/predator role." Hard to tell just how "smart" they are, or how self aware they are. Elsewhere it's Tyranid Warriors (which Lictors are related to) themselves are also quite intelligent, however at least some of that intelligence has partly to do with the fact that it's a synapse creature with a direct connection tot he greater hive mind. A lictor could be a barely self-aware intelligent animal, or a highly self aware human-level or above intelligent sentience, but we just don't know.

. . .

About the "eating of brains" which also came up, I've got this from Tyranid Codex 4th edition: "Feeder Tendrils. These are most commonly associated with the Lictor species, Genestealer mutants and other vanguard creatures. . . . sophisticated tasting organs able to sample and absorb information of all kinds from captured prey. Absorbed information is communicated to nearby Tyranids at a subconscious level, lending them a natural proclivity for attacking weak points and vulnerable areas."

From 2nd ed codex "feeder tentacles . . . are used to lobotomize victims so the Lictor can absorb genetic data and immediate memories by consuming their brains."

**Overread**

Don't forget a lot of Tyranid lore is written by Imperial Scientists. So they get things wrong or under-estimate the actual threat (because they've got more than a touch of that "humans are the best" victorian style approach to science)

So them saying that "at least as intelligent as a human" is already likely assuming humans to be at the very top of the chain or somewhere close.
Meanwhile "ability to operate simple mechanics" is likely an understatement of what Genestealers could do even if they also never really use mechanical weapons or such in battle nor in the lore.

Indeed its interesting that they never carry weapons at all. Chances are it might be something in their DNA/biological make-up that just makes them unable/unwilling to use other tools/weapons.

I've long held that Tyranids have a duality to them. On one hand endless mutable genetics; on the other a core of traits inherent to Tyranids and specific generic strains which directly inhibits and limits them within certain boundaries.

**kabaakaba**

Ok, how it's come together in my head.
First it's a Vanguard organisms in general. There is no self aware at all, at least as we understanding it. But there is purpose. Soften system/prepare system to invasion. So lictor collecting data, looking for high priority targets and eliminate them.
Genestealers build cult, slowly infect more and more.

So they understand(or better to say know what to do).

Now I don't understand how/when Brood mind is emerging. Or it's always here and just waiting when there would be enought organisms around?

**Iracundus**

The Genestealer Cult novels give a description for what happens.

All Genestealers are initially the same. They are infiltrating combat organisms with little self-awareness as humans understand the concept but with instincts and intelligence enough to make tactical decisions about fighting, withdrawing, or infiltrating.

When the first Genestealer successfully infects a victim, that Genestealer is triggered to start developing into a Patriarch. It starts to grow larger, more intelligent, more self-aware and to develop psychic powers. It basically becomes a Synapse creature in its own mini-network which is the brood mind. When the Hive Fleets arrive, the brood mind dissolves when the Patriarch is linked back into the Hive Mind.

If the Patriarch dies, the Cult is thrown into disarray. Newer sources suggest that eventually another Genestealer develops into a new Patriarch and assumes the same role. I think it is similar to how eusocial insects have the queen suppress the development of new queens through pheromones, and therefore when it dies, new queens develop as the suppression is no longer there.