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The Tyranids know - everyone else is left guessing.

The Hive Mind is a vast alien intelligence that has the mental power of trillions upon trillions of lifeforms. Its almost impossible to define because its an unknowable quantity. It is the collective consciousness of the entire Tyranid race.
Its not a Warp entity because the Tyranids permanently exist in realspace and are not Psychic in the way that Humans or Aeldari are. Tyranid psyker biomorphs draw their power from the Hive Minds naturally occurring energies. The Shadow in the Warp is essentially the Hive Mind casting a shroud between realspace and the Warp like a colossal white noise machine. You're not supposed to understand the Hive Mind, thats the point.

You are asking the wrong question. Change the some one to games workshop and you have the real question.

Loom at their gigantic alien melons, and read the books, they're all telepathic all the time. This effect of turning all available warp bandwidth into Tyranid Twitter is called the Shadow in the Warp.

The Hive Mind is essentially the warp god of all the Tyranids and exists in the warp. Its component parts are visible by psykers. Iyanna's interpretation of her witch sight in the story Wraithflight was a hive fleet's hive mind as a giant braid formed from the individual threads/minds of the Tyranids. This fleet braid itself stretched out and joined with those of other fleets and they were the individual threads that formed an even larger structure like a rope that was the Hive Mind of all Tyranids, that Iyanna struggled to grasp due to its sheer size.

With all the Tyranids melded into one giant mind, fleets could travel safely through the warp without worrying about individual daemons who were powerless before the sheer size of the Hive Mind. It would be like an individual daemon trying to stand before the gestalt might of the power that is Khorne. The Tyranids are basically the Hive Mind incarnate. The Shadow in the Warp is the area blanketed by the Hive Mind, making it dangerous for psykers of other races to access the warp as they are driven insane or otherwise burn out. Psykers have described it as white noise or as the unbearable shrieking or noise of countless beings, which is basically their interpretation of the internal communication or processing of the Hive Mind.

The Hive Mind clearly channels the warp through its lesser creatures as there are past descriptions of creatures doing things that are essentially supernatural, such as Bio-Titans rapidly regenerating from lethal damage, even though that would require replacement of lost mass blasted away from the creature (and hence beyond simple conventional healing), or Dominatrix creatures unleashing warp blasts that tear apart tanks and Titans. Hive fleet ships have had the option in the past of psychic bombardment of the battlefield, from Epic Hive War, and Norn Queens have been described as unleashing a psychic death scream when killed that may trigger the spawning of more Norn Queens in other fleets. The individual Tyranid creatures that use this energy can still burn out and perish if they cannot handle the energy, though Tyranids do not seem to have to worry about daemonic possession. If using the warp is analogous to using water from the ocean, with the risk of nasty creatures or contaminants in that water, then one could view the Hive Mind's use of the warp as filtering the water and putting it into a pool for all its individual creatures to use. Hauling water from the pool is free of the risk of nasty creatures, though you still have to handle the volume of water.

The Hive Mind is not a warp entity.

There is one major piece of evidence for this. The Shadow in the Warp disrupts the warp to such an extent that it actually negates and annihilates deamons below a certain threshold of power.

There is a story about Grey Knights protecting an artifact on a world before the Nids show up. The world is overrun and the artifact, now no longer protected, causes a rift with a gak ton of deamons pouring forth that then then face a LOT of problems from the shadow.

The shadow doesn't create a new space in the warp. It's not the hive mind making a new realm like the other warp gods. It's a complete disruption. It's so much white noise that the warp is boarderline nonexistent (in so much as the warp could ever be that). Deamons could not enter the Shadow in the Warp and find the Hive Mind to fight it. There isn't anything there to fight. It's just a null space.

In previous editions Tyranids were immune to Perils of the Warp because they didn't actually channel the warp. They channeled the power of the Hive Mind.

The Hive Mind is not a Warp Entity. But the sheer volume of communication (not words, but sights, smell, feeling, etc...) that is constantly being transmitted between all the different bodies that make up the Tyranid race and thus the Hive Mind causes the Shadow as a side effect.

Also, https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Narvhal the narvhal is the more current version of Nid FTL. They don't use the warp. They bend space time by latching onto gravitic masses.

The Hive Mind is clearly described as a warp entity which is why psykers of other races such as Iyanna can view it with their witch sight (i.e. they look into the warp and see the Hive Mind, which was viewed by Iyanna and one of the Iyanden Farseers as braids formed from the individual warp presences of the Tyranid creatures)

The Shadow in the Warp is disruptive because it is the presence of the Hive Mind, present in the physical body of all its constituent creatures and extending from them. The smothering presence of that is why individual daemons cannot stand against the hive fleet as a whole or why individual daemons cannot possess Tyranid psykers like Zoanthropes. It would be like an individual daemonette or Fury trying to possess Khorne. A Zoanthrope is not a separate entity but is part of the Hive Mind.

All psychic stuff in the 40K universe paradigm is related to the warp.

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The easiest way to describe it is that the Hive Mind is one massive, collective soul. In the same way that humans have souls born from their material bodies that project into the Warp, the Hive Mind is born from the Tyranid species.

Of course, the difference in scale is insane.

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Yes. Whereas individual human, Eldar, Tau souls exist as separate entities, each individual Tyranid is like a cell in one larger entity. In a way, there is only one single Tyranid.

The Hive mind is a gestalt racial memory of the Tyranids that manifests in the warp as a kind of will driving all the connected Tyranids with a semi singular will.

It is a warp entity of sorts but not sentient as we know it, it can and does adapt, plan and understand things such as high priority targets or targets that if killed will sap morale, we know its a warp entity of sorts because the great rift hurt the hive mind when it opened which in turn saved the Blood Angels on Baal.

It is not a chaos god though, they are something else entirely.

It is sentient. In Wraithflight Iyanna while observing a hive fleet with her witch sight was in turn seen by the Hive Mind. It took notice and recognized her as being a pivotal figure present at multiple of its defeats by the Eldar, and Iyanna experienced its personalized enmity against her.

Frankly I think that is GW’s attempt at making the Hive Mind more relatable and I do not personally like it. The Hive Mind should no more deign to contact individual humans or Eldar than you would try to talk to an individual bacterium on your food. My personal take is that the Hive Mind does not recognize entities below its scale as individuals. Perhaps all its attacks are automatic, below its level of conscious thought, just as a human’s digestion and immune system response are not under conscious control.

Maybe the Hive Mind is lonely because it has never met anyone it could talk to. Or rather perhaps it has never done so with a peer level entity and so does not know how to interact since it has never needed to do so before

Well they already can talk with people - Genestealer Cults. Which I note are not unique to humans, just the most populated group and thus represented. I'm sure if some stealers got into Eldar they'd create an Eldar Cult quite readily. Orks it would probably end up like Chaos orks and them not being "orky" enough and being killed quite quickly.



I think the thing is the Hive Mind has so many potential elements to manifest as what a person might see as an individual, especially through our desires to associate with it in a form we understand; but it ultimately might only be a facet of the Hive Mind.




Also note Chaos Gods are not "Gods". They call themselves Gods, but they are simply warp creatures that have devoured the most souls over time and risen to the top. In theory there could be any number of Chaos Gods and heck back in the early days there was a 5th god who later vanished (though I have a feeling he might have been a touch more Old World than 40K, but back then Chaos lore swapped over a lot more).

I think it might be more true to say that the Chaos Gods are Warp entities born and created within the Warp itself. That is their natural habitat. Meanwhile the Tyranid Hive Mind and the Shadow of the Warp is less a creature living within it and more a projection of a creature living within the real world.



Indeed if we consider that all living things have a soul within the setting (or at least all sentient life); then consider that when you die your soul goes to the Warp then the Shadow in the Warp might well be just that. The uncountable weight of every single Tyranid that ever died. With the stark difference that they remain united in death as a single group as they were in life and that they also retain a connection to the living swarm as well. Basically a huge singular will of "soul" energy that defies the natural creatures of the Warp from devouring or threatening it.

 Overread wrote:
Well they already can talk with people - Genestealer Cults. Which I note are not unique to humans, just the most populated group and thus represented. I'm sure if some stealers got into Eldar they'd create an Eldar Cult quite readily. Orks it would probably end up like Chaos orks and them not being "orky" enough and being killed quite quickly.

The Hive Mind doesn't talk to them. Individual Genestealers hypnotize or infect people, but the Hive Mind itself does not communicate directly with them.

Just as your cells communicate among themselves with a dizzying array of receptors and chemical messengers to regulate their behavior, but you, the entity that is the sum total of all those cells, does not directly consciously communicate with those individual cells.

I think the line between the Hive Mind and the Cult varies depending what generation you are and your role. There's at least one short story bit (I think in a recent codex) talking about the planet the Tyranids built and of them bringing upper ranking Cultists to the world to commune directly with the Hive Mind; or reaffirming their connection or such.

Certainly most of the lower ranks of the cult will range from hardly invested/mutated to regular people who are in the cult to join the revolution. At the upper end things change.

Also don't forget the Genestealer is the Hive Mind. If its communing with you then you are communing with the Hive Mind. Be it a small part of it (because the cult is new and hasn't linked up with the main body so readily) or the greater total as a Hive Ship is in the system and the riots and uprising have started so that the world is ready to receive their blessing.

I like to thing of it like this, just my thought on it and of course this is before new lore has probably come out to say this is all wrong

The warp is this crazy mirrored plane full of emotions and energy, it feeds off mortal emotions and souls and daemons are wrapped up in all that. It's like a giant agar jelly that soaks up all this weirdness and allows it to collate and permeate. Here it is more or less tuned into to the frequency of this galaxy, lots of individuals knocking about doing their thing. It is the "otherworld", it is Hell, it is supposed to be incomprehensible to the brain.

The Tyranid hive mind isn't a warp entity but it does emit a whole helluva of psychic energy. The hive mind could easily be as old as the C'Tan. Perhaps the Great Devourer has always existed and has been slowly devouring all life since creation. It exists on the mortal plane and there is no reason why it should need the warp to generate that psychic (synaptic) control. Tyranids are not individual, they are one collective of soulless, emotionless, bare, raw killing machines. They are all horrible little cogs in the giant gribbly machine. The warp feeds on emotion and Tyranids do not have any. They are otherworldly in the same way the warp is, but for different reasons.

So if you feed off emotion and you come across something that is completely, truly emotionless it must be this feeling of nails on chalkboard. A entire Hive Fleet multiplies that by a massive degree. Like the buzzing of a swarm of insects (you picking up on this swarm imagery for a big army of bugs right?)

The Shadow that the Tyranids create is part of their story. To make them seem like this all consuming swarm that will wipe out all life, even the warp cannot deal with them. And perhaps it doesn't. Once the warp energies find the lack of souls in Tyranids it merely disperses and that is what the Shadow represents.

Mortal souls are essentially food for the warp and everything is food for the Tyranids. This is also down to the fact they are from another galaxy, that's what is meant to make them scary. They are so otherworldly that they are unfathomable.

 Overread wrote:
Well they already can talk with people - Genestealer Cults. Which I note are not unique to humans, just the most populated group and thus represented. I'm sure if some stealers got into Eldar they'd create an Eldar Cult quite readily. Orks it would probably end up like Chaos orks and them not being "orky" enough and being killed quite quickly.



I think the thing is the Hive Mind has so many potential elements to manifest as what a person might see as an individual, especially through our desires to associate with it in a form we understand; but it ultimately might only be a facet of the Hive Mind.




Also note Chaos Gods are not "Gods". They call themselves Gods, but they are simply warp creatures that have devoured the most souls over time and risen to the top. In theory there could be any number of Chaos Gods and heck back in the early days there was a 5th god who later vanished (though I have a feeling he might have been a touch more Old World than 40K, but back then Chaos lore swapped over a lot more).

I think it might be more true to say that the Chaos Gods are Warp entities born and created within the Warp itself. That is their natural habitat. Meanwhile the Tyranid Hive Mind and the Shadow of the Warp is less a creature living within it and more a projection of a creature living within the real world.



Indeed if we consider that all living things have a soul within the setting (or at least all sentient life); then consider that when you die your soul goes to the Warp then the Shadow in the Warp might well be just that. The uncountable weight of every single Tyranid that ever died. With the stark difference that they remain united in death as a single group as they were in life and that they also retain a connection to the living swarm as well. Basically a huge singular will of "soul" energy that defies the natural creatures of the Warp from devouring or threatening it.

Whoa there! The chaos gods are not entities that have eaten enough souls! They are the manifestations of coalesced emotions.

Andykp wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Well they already can talk with people - Genestealer Cults. Which I note are not unique to humans, just the most populated group and thus represented. I'm sure if some stealers got into Eldar they'd create an Eldar Cult quite readily. Orks it would probably end up like Chaos orks and them not being "orky" enough and being killed quite quickly.



I think the thing is the Hive Mind has so many potential elements to manifest as what a person might see as an individual, especially through our desires to associate with it in a form we understand; but it ultimately might only be a facet of the Hive Mind.




Also note Chaos Gods are not "Gods". They call themselves Gods, but they are simply warp creatures that have devoured the most souls over time and risen to the top. In theory there could be any number of Chaos Gods and heck back in the early days there was a 5th god who later vanished (though I have a feeling he might have been a touch more Old World than 40K, but back then Chaos lore swapped over a lot more).

I think it might be more true to say that the Chaos Gods are Warp entities born and created within the Warp itself. That is their natural habitat. Meanwhile the Tyranid Hive Mind and the Shadow of the Warp is less a creature living within it and more a projection of a creature living within the real world.



Indeed if we consider that all living things have a soul within the setting (or at least all sentient life); then consider that when you die your soul goes to the Warp then the Shadow in the Warp might well be just that. The uncountable weight of every single Tyranid that ever died. With the stark difference that they remain united in death as a single group as they were in life and that they also retain a connection to the living swarm as well. Basically a huge singular will of "soul" energy that defies the natural creatures of the Warp from devouring or threatening it.

Whoa there! The chaos gods are not entities that have eaten enough souls! They are the manifestations of coalesced emotions.

True, but at the same time consumption of souls is part of their power and structure. Consumption might be the wrong way to put it; gathering, coalescence, unity. Whatever it is they do certainly latch onto certain soul energies and focus on them but will also consume almost any soul they can get. How much they consume then becomes their power structure of a sorts.

But they are a kind of entity within the warp and its often noted that there are other demons and creatures within the warp that also corrupt souls and take them. Only they are much lesser and thus not worthy of note like the great 4.

Sure, but thats important to consider when looking at the Hive Mind.

It's not hunting emotional energy. It's not collecting souls. It doesn't care. In the story where it fights deamons at first it doesn't recognize what they are, and then decides it's corrupting the food supply and acts to wipe it out.

The Hive Mind is so powerful that it casts the shadow into the warp. The Hive Mind is not a warp entity. It doesn't reside in the warp and then reach across to manipulate the tyranids physical bodies. The Hive Mind is a entity that comes from and gives a gak about the materium. It has none of the features or behaviours to compare it to any other warp entity.

The Hive Mind is a warp entity and most assuredly does manipulate Tyranid bodies and has done so from as far back as Epic Hive War and then the first Tyranid Codex in 2nd edition. That is how the Tyranids can accomplish some of their supernatural feats of resilience, healing (over and above their normal healing), and their psychic attacks. It arises out of the Tyranids of the material universe in the same way that the Chaos gods are warp entities that arise out of the coalesced psychic energies of living beings in the material universe. That doesn't make them not warp entities.

The Hive Mind as warp entity is not some big gribbly sitting in warpspace as some people seemingly envision. It is as its name suggests, the sum of all the component psychic parts of the Tyranid creatures in every hive fleet. It is present in every hive fleet simultaneously. It is visible with Eldar witch sight when they gaze into the warp, which makes the Hive Mind a warp entity.

Again, previous codexes have made it very clear that the nids do not use warp energy to do their "psychic powers". They were immune to the perils of the warp. They were specifically stated as not using warp energy to do what they do.

 Lance845 wrote:
Again, previous codexes have made it very clear that the nids do not use warp energy to do their "psychic powers". They were immune to the perils of the warp. They were specifically stated as not using warp energy to do what they do.

The earliest Codices make it very clear the Tyranids do manipulate warp energy. The Hive Mind does it and channels it through individual Tyranids rather than Tyranids acting as individual psykers accessing the warp itself. Creatures don't suffer "Perils of the Warp" only in the sense that in fluff terms they are not being possessed by daemons. They still suffer Perils (which is a game term) in that they can be overloaded by the amount of energy going through them and still burn out and die from that.

Zoanthropes are vital nodes for harnessing the Hive Mind’s psychic might and are created with a powerful sense of self-preservation. Therefore, they instinctively project a potent warp field to protect themselves in battle

p. 52, 8th edition Tyranid Codex

The Maleceptor is the purest embodiment of the Hive Mind’s psychic power, a living vessel for the gestalt consciousness that rules the Tyranid race. As it advances ominously into battle, warp energy spears from its eyeless cranium, vapourising all in its path.

p. 53, 8th edition Tyranid Codex

It's quite clear that the Tyranids use the warp. It even says it is warp energy.

Well, we know that all Tyranid creatures can at least receive psychic signals. That is after all how the Hive Mind overrides their instinctual responses as and when needed.

So the entire race is at least somewhat psychic.

We also know that as needed, the Hive Mind can receive information from any part of the swarm. Whether such focus burns out the organism being used as, well, the lens? That I can’t recall off the top of my head.

But in terms of Godhood? The Hive Mind is not a single mind. It’s everything in the swarm. A truly gestalt consciousness. No one creature has been demonstrated to diminish the overall consciousness - though strategic strikes can affect its immediate cohesion.

So to the Hive Mind, the Warp is merely a means to an end. Not something to be feared. Not something it purposefully alters. I’ve long theorised that the Shadow In The Warp is essentially white noise, the effect of billions of psychic organisms in constant communion just jamming up the airwaves.

I think of it like being in a crowded gig. Outside of the gig, I can speak quite normally, and be heard quite normally. But between the noise of the crowd and the music? If I’m talking to someone, I need to raise my voice to be heard. Do that wrong, and you can strain your vocal chords and end up with a sort throat.

Of course, when it comes to psychic communication etc, you get a sore, possibly explodey head from the strain of trying to cut through the background noise and be heard as one voice among billions.

According to the Hive Mind’s Facebook page “It’s Complicated.”

It comes down to this. Either

1) The Hive Mind is a entity that comes from and exists in the immaterium. It's a warp god. And it reaches across into the materium and controls the tyranid race.

or

2) The Hive Mind is the collected gestalt consciousness of all the Tyranid organisms in the materium. And the sheer mass of it's psychic network casts it's shadow into the warp.

So the question is where does the Hive Mind originate? Is it a matirium based entity or a immatirum based entity?

The Chaos Gods and Deamons are warp based entities. The Eldar Gods are warp based entities. Born from the Eldars belief in them but born none the less in the warp. But the Tyranids, in every codex, in every book, are always explained as the collected impulses of all the tyranids that then takes the wheel and drives. Down to a cellular and genetic level it is rooted in the materium.

It's not a Warp god. It exists in real space. Not a manifestation of something from the warp. As the gestalt collection of every Tyranid organism. A galaxy spanning collected consciousness. That can put a presence of it in the warp. But it doesn't make it FROM the warp.

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The Orks don't use the Warp for their psychic abilities so yes, the Warp is not the only conduit for Psyker powers.

It's also that some areas of this lore are not written in stone; they vary somewhat writer to writer depending on the focus of the story. And there's a generational thing too in that sometimes things change little by little and then suddenly you step back and realise that something has, through small steps, changed quite a lot from what it originally was.

Sometimes that's why two people focused on the lore can argue of points because one read stuff from 20 years ago and one has kept up with the more recent, but hasn't read the old stuff. So they both argue because they both believe they are correct; of course that's before we throw in white dwarf; fan stories/theories and general miss-remembering .