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Made in us
Wicked Canoptek Wraith




Rather than spam a million topics on this board, I thought it'd be better to bump this thread a million times.

Q1 How big is each faction?
Imperium of Man - 1million worlds
Orks - ??? As big as imperium of man?
Tau - 100 worlds
Chaos - ???
Tyranids - ??? Multiple Galaxies?
Eldar - ???
Necrons - ??? As big as imperium of man?
Dark Eldar - Commorragh is as big as a star system. How big is a star system?

Q2 What is a soul?
I thought it's the normal soul, you know, your sentience/memories/etc. And that's why the Eldar are scared of dying because their soul will go to Slaanesh.
But necrons are completely souless. And they function just fine (the leaders anyways). So the soul isn't your sentience/memories/etc.?
So what is a soul in WH40K?

Q3 Is the Tyranid hive mind a single entity, or a billions of entities?
So is it like a powerful warp god with a bajillion mindless soldiers, or is it a true hive mind with a bajillion individual entities networking with each other like cloud computing?

Q4 Why aren't Tyranids eating planets?
Pyrovores eat rocks.
Haruspexes eat rock
So what aren't the Tyranids flooding fully conquered planets with Pyrovores and Haruspexes to gobble up the entire planet all the way to the core?

Q5 Why did the necrons go to sleep?
From what I gather, they were spent resource wise so they decided to hunker down until the Eldar kill themselves.
But why didn't they, you know, just hide and gather resources? Why waste 60 million years doing nothing?

Q6 Why didn't the Eldar kill the Necrons in their sleep?
They just kept watch over suspected planets. The Eldar are stronger which is why the Necrons hid, so why didn't they just bust down found tomb worlds and obliterate everything inside? Why leave the Necrons alone while they have no reinforcements?

Q7 Do Necrons reproduce?
I know that they're really, really, really hard to kill and they rebuild all of their broken teleported in soldiers, so they don't really go down in numbers, but do they increase in numbers outside of canoptek stuff?

Q8 How strong is the Necron Obelisk lore wise?
Give me a comparison like a titan or something
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






roboemperor wrote:

Necrons - ??? As big as imperium of man?

'What the Imperium cannot know is that, should the Necrons ever fully wake and unite, they would face a foe as numerous as themselves.'
Codex: Necrons (7th ed.) 'The Awakening Empire'
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

1) Imperium is the biggest by far than all the others
Orks I forget
Eldar don't hold many if any worlds, they lost them during their great fall to Slaanesh when their depravity birthed a Chaos God. They now live on vast "Craftworld" ships

Tyranids - unknown. Technically only 1 planet in the Galaxy though, for purposes still unknown

3) The Tyranid Hive mind is a single mind formed of an infinite number of minds. And like most Tyranid lore any specifics beyond that are totally unknown. We don't even really have any formal confirmation that there's just one Tyranid Hive mind. All tyranid lore is basically other races (mostly Imperials) trying to work them out

4) Ask the Tyranids. Chances are that with the Galaxy still a hotbed of danger for them they have different feeding patterns which might focus on fast feeding rather than slow so that they remain mobile rather than digging in

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Made in lu
Rampaging Khorne Dreadnought






What is a soul in 40k? Kind of hard to answer.
Horus' soul was obliterated, and yet simultaneously he is running around in the warp on his own pilgrimage, timy-wimy and all that, but it suggests that a soul isn't simply your warp mirror driving your body.
It's something that can be trapped and still has personality. There was a heretic human in the eisenhorn series, forgot the name, that essentially had his soul in a box. I don't think it was explicitly stated as such but that was my impression. A human soulstone if you want.
It seems Sanguinius is trapped on the spirit of vengeance and there is of course the eldar soulstones which can even pilot machines despite not having a body. Curze might very well be in a soulstone himself.

Ghosts are real, but they're more like echoes and not a trapped soul, so it would seem they don't share that afterlife sort of concept. and strong emotions take a life of their own, unrelated to the soul.
Fabius bile has cloned primarchs which not only seem to remember the past, they are not corrupted by the warp. Despite corrupting your soul is totally a part of chaos, and this is while Fulgrim is still alive.
Unfortunetely it is anyones guess if those clones have a soul of their own. Some eldar has effectively possessed a human before, to it seems clear the there is no strong link between your body and your soul.

We know that chaos cultist's souls belong to their respective chaos god when they die. As you say, necrons do just fine without, assuming the necron was strong willed before loosing it.
Psychic nulls, may or may not have a soul or something else entirely.

The long and the short of it is´that souls are totally a thing in 40k, but nobody really knowns the rules.
   
Made in ca
Wicked Wych With a Whip




Q4 Why aren't Tyranids eating planets?
Pyrovores eat rocks.
Haruspexes eat rock
So what aren't the Tyranids flooding fully conquered planets with Pyrovores and Haruspexes to gobble up the entire planet all the way to the core?


Tyranids don't make much sense from an ecological stand point. They say when they arrive at a planet they strip it down to bare rock, eating everything alive, all the organic compounds and then sucking up the air and water. Leaving lifeless cold desolation in their wake.

Do you know what gas giants are made of? Organic compounds, water, air stuff.

Jupiter alone has 317.8 times the mass of the Earth. The mass of Saturn is 95 times the mass of the Earth. Neptune has 17 times as much mass compared to the Earth. Uranus is 14.5 times more massive than Earth.

Thats 443 times more mass. And its all the good stuff. All organic compounds nitrogen, ammonia, water, carbon hydrogen. All the stuff that is relatively scarce on rocky planets and all the stuff they scoop up.

All the water on earth makes up only 0.02% of the mass. Atmosphere by mass is a rounding error 0.00008%. So we will call the water and air 1 5000th of the mass of the earth.

So from one small system which may or may not be defended the gass giants can provide as much 'life stuff,' organic compounds etc as 2215000 rocky planets like we use. One system has more of what they want than 2 imperium of mans.

One system has more than double what they could pilliage from the entire Imperium.

But they aren't mining gas giants. They could have more than they could ever use in one system.

They must have other plans. They aren't eating planets. They are sterilizing them.


This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/14 02:59:21


 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

I believe they do eat other worlds. However the story tends to focus on when they hit populated worlds because the Imperium basically doesn't care about gas giants in space, but they do care about Space Marine Homeworlds etc... Though I'm sure there's likely a few stories about fleets engaging over gas giants to try and fend off Tyranids.


Remember the story about Tyranids focuses on other races encountering them so it filters the lore somewhat over what you'd get if stories were written by/about tyranids themselves.



And yes they are sterilizing worlds. Clearly the Hive Mind operates on levels far more than just feeding. Cleansing worlds leaves them barren, but also means that each world consumed empowers the Tyranids and weakens their foes.

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Wicked Wych With a Whip




If the Tyranids were mining gas giants it would be all over. They can get more than double the resources from the gas giants of 1 system than the entire imperium.

Gas giants are more common than rocky worlds that can support life.

It is impossible math. There is no way to beat that force. When they entered a solar system they would alter the orbit if the planets.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut







Tyranids:
Put yourself in the same situation: You fly into a new system, you're tired and hungry, looking for food. What are you going to do? Do you go over to pantry, get out the flour, salt, and all of the raw ingredients, and make your food from scratch, or do you go over to the grocery store and take ready made food off of the shelves?

The description in the codex I think tilts towards the Tyranids attacking worlds for a combination of two reasons:
1. Food to continue.
2. Integration of the biomass and its innovations

It's common in science fiction stories for gas giants to have life on them. That may be enough to explain when the Tyranids will stop to devour a gas giant and when they won't.
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

At the same time don't forget the huge energy conversions that must go on within Tyranids. Furthermore whilst they are highly evolved they rely on the "meat grinder" method of war even more so than the Imperium. The Swarm is basically following the battle doctrine of "choke the machine guns with bodies" approach to warfare for their gaunt class.


That and lets face it 40K has NEVER been hard-sci-fi in terms of physics.

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Made in ca
Wicked Wych With a Whip




 solkan wrote:
Tyranids:
Put yourself in the same situation: You fly into a new system, you're tired and hungry, looking for food. What are you going to do? Do you go over to pantry, get out the flour, salt, and all of the raw ingredients, and make your food from scratch, or do you go over to the grocery store and take ready made food off of the shelves?

The description in the codex I think tilts towards the Tyranids attacking worlds for a combination of two reasons:
1. Food to continue.
2. Integration of the biomass and its innovations

It's common in science fiction stories for gas giants to have life on them. That may be enough to explain when the Tyranids will stop to devour a gas giant and when they won't.


Sure I buy them eating rocky planets for a quick snack before making supper. But once they get around to eating the gas giants the scale is off the charts. 2 millions times more.

At the level of genetic manipulation the nids do there are only 2 inputs energy and matter. There is more of that in 1 system with a reasonable number of gas giants than their is in all the other factions combined.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut







Headlss wrote:

Sure I buy them eating rocky planets for a quick snack before making supper. But once they get around to eating the gas giants the scale is off the charts. 2 millions times more.

At the level of genetic manipulation the nids do there are only 2 inputs energy and matter. There is more of that in 1 system with a reasonable number of gas giants than their is in all the other factions combined.


If their goal was the consumption of all useful matter for reproduction, then consumption of the gas giants would be productive. If their goal is the integration of biomass, then it's more likely that the consumption of the oceans etc. is a byproduct of the process, then consumption of lifeless gas giants isn't productive.

That's why I made the comparison between the pantry and the grocery store. Sure, a gas giant has all sorts of things that are present in food. But none of it has been assembled as food yet. The Tyranids go a planet, eat all the food , then they eat their plates and utensils and lick the foundation clean to ensure they got everything. It's like being hungry for Taco Bell, so you go and eat a Taco Bell restaurant and everything in it down to the foundation.

I mean, if the Tyranids cared about gas giants, why would they bother with gene stealers, the gene stealer cults, and all of that stuff about leading the hive to tasty planets. All the hive would need, if they cared about raw materials is to grow big eyes on their ships and look for gas giants.

Which implies possibilities like:
1. They're intelligent and they're doing this sub-optimal thing deliberately because they prefer it.
2. Something made them this way.
3. Something else did develop which eats gas giants, and the Tyranids are the complimentary niche life form.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Tyranids want genetic material, first and foremost. That's why they scour planets to find every last, little bit of life. The activities of Genestealers indicate that the Hive Mind especially values complex life forms.

Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of surprise - Winston Churchill 
   
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Battlefortress Driver with Krusha Wheel




Douglasville, GA

Most likely explanation is that it just takes too much energy to convert raw elements into actual organic compounds. Gas giants don't really have proteins and sugars floating around in them. The water and air Nids take from planets are probably because of how essential these are for organic life, not because they convert them into any kind of organic compound.
   
Made in ca
Wicked Wych With a Whip




 flandarz wrote:
Most likely explanation is that it just takes too much energy to convert raw elements into actual organic compounds. Gas giants don't really have proteins and sugars floating around in them. The water and air Nids take from planets are probably because of how essential these are for organic life, not because they convert them into any kind of organic compound.


Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, some bacteria and some protistans use the energy from sunlight to produce glucose from carbon dioxide and water. This glucose can be converted into pyruvate which releases adenosine triphosphate (ATP) by cellular respiration. Oxygen is also formed.


If a daffodil can do it I bet the hive mind can figure out photosynthesis.
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Aye, but rendering a whole planet down at the mineral level using plants takes a very long time. Long enough that you'd bet the Imperium would be sending fleets to run Exterminatus programs against the Hive Fleet whilst they are immobile and shackled to a planet.


Tyranids are clearly not just feeding, their pattern of movement suggests a far more targeted invasion. They clearly identified the Marines are a clear threat to themselves and made two fleets go on basically a Crusade against specific Marine Chapters.

Tyranids are very clearly intending to destroy the core power-base of the greatest threats in the Galaxy. I suspect if/when the Tyranids had wiped out the last species capable of rising against them they might well settle down to harvesting mineral content and other resources from less pre-prepared planets and worlds. At that point they'd have nothing to fear and could take their time steadily feeding.

IT might even be that out in the black between Galaxies there are other forms of Hive Ship designed specifically to graze at a galaxy. That the Hive Fleets we see thus far are specifically the pacification end of the Tyranid Swarm. Designed to gain new genetic data; to consume readily available biomass and move with speed. Designed to both assault and take out specific threats, but also to continually weaken. Tyranids might be able to slow down and graze on mineral worlds, but the likes of the Imperium only weaken every time a habitable world is consumed and rendered inhospitable for human life. Sure the Imperium can terraform and build hive cities; but all that costs them additional investment and resources.

The Tyranids current method of attack bleeds at the Imperium and denies them worlds; systems; staging grounds; whilst continually taking down the greatest threats to themselves.

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Douglasville, GA

I'm sure it could, but as per your photosynthesis quote, it would require a source of energy. In this case, proximity to a star. It's there the secondary issue of it being REALLY inefficient for "mobile" creatures. Moving requires a lot of energy, as do things like brains and hearts. There's a reason animals don't perform photosynthesis.

So, I imagine, a Hive feeding in gas giants would only do so if in a "dormant" state, and close enough to the system's star to utilize the energy to convert those raw materials into something usable.

Edit: also what the person who posted above me said.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/15 16:13:33


 
   
Made in us
Wicked Canoptek Wraith




So I did some digging, is this correct?

Norn Queen = A single completely sentient, intelligent, and INDEPENDENT entity in control of an entire hive fleet/army. Either in a Hive Ship or a Dominatrix.

Hive Mind = All the Norn Queens

Source:https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Norn-Queen
Norn Queens psychically arguing with their sisters through the hive mind and giving orders to all tyranids.
   
Made in ca
Wicked Wych With a Whip




Isn't the Norn Queen that lady in the sphere borg ship from star treck?

Or am I getting her confused with a Zerg lady from star craft?
   
Made in us
Wicked Canoptek Wraith




Headlss wrote:
Isn't the Norn Queen that lady in the sphere borg ship from star treck?

Or am I getting her confused with a Zerg lady from star craft?


They're the highest ranking creatures in the entire tyranid race. When one dies their psychic death knell is so powerful it momentarily puts out the emperor's warp beacon and any other norn queen that receives that death knell makes more norn queens.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Halandri

What if jungle deathworlds are an early tyrannid attempt at assimilating the mineral content of rocky planets and capture energy from their sun in a slowburn fashion?
   
Made in ca
Storm Trooper with Maglight




I dont understand the Necron hybernation either. By the end of the War in Heaven they were too damaged to beat up the Eldar, and instead waited until they died out and more races came up for them to conquer.

I mean, what made them think the next big race wouldnt be even stronger than the Eldar? And how does waiting for the galaxy to teem with life help them conquer it as opposed to a galaxy where most life has been killed?

But Necrons were much more powerful than Eldar. They were simply too bruised up after killing the Old Ones that they couldnt help but to sleep a little bit

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Collection:
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

nareik wrote:
What if jungle deathworlds are an early tyrannid attempt at assimilating the mineral content of rocky planets and capture energy from their sun in a slowburn fashion?



There's actually earlier lore in one of the Codex where Imperials propose that the Catachan Devil might actually be a Tyraind. A species send far into the Galaxy many generations ago as a scout which was designed to operate (reproduce) on its own. However having completed its objective and kept breeding outside of contact with the Swarm it steadily lost elements of itself like its connection to the Hive Mind - rendering it a very deadly, but isolated species.

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Wicked Canoptek Wraith




Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems...

Necrons will win WH40K.
They are as numerous as Imperium of man.
They are stronger than the imperium of man.
They got these crazy powerful artifacts
and...

Cadian Pylons shutdown the warp, defeating everything.
Chaos
Tyranids.
Eldar

Am I correct about Cadian Pylons destroying Tyranid Psychic Synapse Communications/Connections and rendering them worthless?
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka




Necrons win because they can either just wait for Tyranids to cripple everyone and finish people off or just use time travel to go back and do it differently.

tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam  
   
Made in us
Wicked Canoptek Wraith




1. It says 100% of the tyranid reproduction is done by the Norn Queen. So how did the Octarius tyranids reproduce while hiding from the orks? Did they have a Norn Queen hiding under the surface?

2. I also read something about a pariah gene being injected into a Norn Queen to make it self aware and separate from the hive mind. This true?

3. Kroots can eat and digest Necrodermis?

   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Tyranids are masters of evolution - either they had a Norn Queen hidden or they evolved something very specific to deal with a specific problem. Much like they've evolved and now use the Tervigon as a main battle-line unit that births new gaunts.
They've also been shown to use rippers like larva from Starcraft Zerg. Ergo breeding rippers in pools and then letting them feast, the ripper then using the additional gained body mass to change its form into the gaunt genus.

Basically Tyranids don't have had and fast rules to how they behave because all the "rules" we know of are only based upon observation and extrapolation by other races. Tyranids are quite happy to change things as the situation requires.

Look at the other change, the Swarmlord. An almost individual within the swarm that preserves its identity and gene pool and is reborn through other hives as required. Allowing it to "move" impossible distances across the Galaxy to be where it needs to be.

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 Overread wrote:
Tyranids are masters of evolution - either they had a Norn Queen hidden or they evolved something very specific to deal with a specific problem. Much like they've evolved and now use the Tervigon as a main battle-line unit that births new gaunts.
They've also been shown to use rippers like larva from Starcraft Zerg. Ergo breeding rippers in pools and then letting them feast, the ripper then using the additional gained body mass to change its form into the gaunt genus.

Basically Tyranids don't have had and fast rules to how they behave because all the "rules" we know of are only based upon observation and extrapolation by other races. Tyranids are quite happy to change things as the situation requires.

Look at the other change, the Swarmlord. An almost individual within the swarm that preserves its identity and gene pool and is reborn through other hives as required. Allowing it to "move" impossible distances across the Galaxy to be where it needs to be.


So either the rippers metamorphosed into a Norn Queen or something else spawns rippers.

I guess if Necrons Pylon up the entire galaxy the Tyranids will just adapt and create a new hive mind that doesn't use psychic communications.
   
Made in fr
Inquisitorial Keeper of the Xenobanks





France

OP: the orks are IIRC bigger than the whole Imperium of Man. There are sometimes whole xenos empires between two single human worlds. And most of them are Orks. The only issue is they aren't United, at all.
The eldars did attack the necrons during the great sleep, but they were quite busy too and then the fall happened (and necrons world weren't without defenses + hidden on mainly death worlds where nobody come).
The necrons are about as numerous as Mankind IIRC again.
In the good old fluff when things made sense and weren't written by monkeys, the necrons went to bed because of the Enslaver Plague: after so much war, using psy powers and causing so much pain and sorrow, the warp echoed it and enslavers and maybe deamons too ( don't remember exactl it has been a long time) came into the galaxy and took control of parts of it and living beings in it. It was a total less so the necrons sealed themselves away awaiting for things to calm down.
In the good old fluff again they could reproduce in a way: the pariah ! They had engineered the bull gene into mankind and we're actively harvesting null people and turning them into null necrons. Super cool unit that just disappeared.

   
Made in fi
Courageous Space Marine Captain






 godardc wrote:

In the good old fluff when things made sense and weren't written by monkeys, the necrons

Let me finish that sentence for you: 'did not exist!'

   
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Longtime Dakkanaut





Things would have been fine if they'd just released a new codex that talked about rebellious factions of necrons, but left the main force as slaves.

Ward completely undermined the ctan with the switcheroo he pulled.

Also, there was no reason at all to give necrons their own looted webway, and then turn around and give their ftl to the bids with a the narvhal....


The necrons slept for 60 million years while the Eldar fell around the 25-30th millennium. That a lot of millions of years for them to do nothing to the necrons....



Given that the age of the imperium is 0.0006% of the history of life in the galaxy post war in heaven, there's an entire massive history to explore that is completely ignored.

The galaxy before humanity existed would be an interesting one to see

   
 
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