Tackling a Hive Fleet

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**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

How do!

More an exploratory thread than one entirely based off my own opinion. My own opinion will of course feature, but I’ll try to stop comfortably short of conclusions.

Looking to the background we have of course see Hive Fleets and Splinter Fleets dealt with. And via Advanced Space Crusade and Tyranid Attack, the brave, bold or possibly terminally stupid can board an individual Hive Ship whilst it’s still in bio-stasis, and slay it by destroying its vital organs.

So overall, they’re not completely unstoppable. The downside is, you’ve got to be incredibly thorough. Even a single Drone Ship making planet fall can replenish stocks, up to and including spawning a new fleet. Rinse and repeat a few times, and the threat grows once again. There’s also the Shadow In The Warp, which is perhaps their greatest asset. Not only does it prevent messages getting out the system, but even nearby reinforcements sent in before the Shadow completely occludes a system will find the Warp extremely turbulent, making their travel incredibly risky.

Yet they have inherent weaknesses. Whilst likely efficient beyond our ken? They are biological. They need sustenance in the form of food and water. And every engagement reduces their stocks. Not just in the exertions of their ships, but every shot is the result of a biological process, be it a spine, acid, bioelectricity, some manky bug etc.

This introduces the very real possibility of starving them out. Indeed, the more you can engage them whilst they travel between systems, the more you erode those stocks. You “just need” to play keep away with large centres of biomass. If you can do that? Overall attrition begins to swing in your favour as the Hive Fleet struggles to replace losses and ammo. There may even be a distinct tipping point where it can no longer properly defend itself, making the final engagements much easier.

The above is of course largely theoretical, and much easier said than done. So…how would you go about trying to do that? Or if you have another way to encounter them, what is it?

**SirDonlad**

Figuring out what means of propulsion the Hive Ships use could be the answer.

Destroying its stock of propellant or other form of motive drive would allow for nudging the thing into a star - i don't care how adaptive the biological processes are, they wont survive being immersed in a Meson-Gluon-Quark plasma!

The Hive Ship relies on the smaller genus creatures it harbors to agglomerate biomass for Planetside-Ship extraction so i don't think its going to suddenly start gaining propellant or motive energy from a star its falling into.

If that's all it takes then the next problem is to ensure that no Tyranid genus entities escape the Hive Ship to the surrounding star system.

Maybe that's how genestealer infestations happen? Their Hive Ship loses all propellant and falls into the gravity well of a star, shedding genestealer infestation nodes to the surrounding system of planets - like accepting that the Hive Ship is now a sacrificial component of the Hive-Minds expansion process?

Food for thought.

**Iracundus**

SirDonlad wrote:

The Hive Ship relies on the smaller genus creatures it harbors to agglomerate biomass for Planetside-Ship extraction so i don't think its going to suddenly start gaining propellant or motive energy from a star its falling into.

Tyranid ships seem to use propellant which seems to be waste and waste gases. We know Imperial ships expel plasma at high velocity. Tyranid ships appear to do the same with lower velocity (but perhaps higher mass) waste. They are still generally slower than Imperial ships, aside from a few specialized ships like Kraken.

The BFG upgrade they could get to increase their base speed took the form of bio-vanes to collect energy from the nearest star. I don't think it was literally a solar sail. I suspect it was more like the vanes give surface area and some organisms within them use the sunlight energy to grow and these organisms are then themselves used or metabolized in the process to provide energy.

The optimal way to defeat a Tyranid fleet is purely in space, because they are consuming a planet from the moment they make planetfall. Even if they are still expending net resources, you are now potentially dealing with the net biomass of a planet being recycled into making Tyranids the longer you keep dragging out the surface war. The problem about engaging a Tyranid fleet is the Shadow in the Warp. It clouds a fleet's approach so the Imperium often does not know which star systems are being attacked until it is already too late to concentrate naval forces there. The individual local system defence forces of a star system are almost always insufficient to do more than be a speed bump for a hive fleet. On the strategic level the Tyranids have the initiative because they are the ones that are able to pick where and when to attack, whereas the Imperium is forever on the defensive as the hive fleets come from space and have no fixed assets (outliers like the Hive Fleet Tiamet's protection of that planet notwithstanding)

**Overread**

The Imperium tried starving Hive Fleets as a tactic. The problem is Hive Fleets have a huge momentum to start with, so starvation tactics take time before the fleet runs out of resources. Denying the Tyranids resources means destroying worlds which makes them basically useless as resource points and population centres for your own faction. The speed of advance is also such that you might not even be able to evacuate whole worlds and systems; so you've got a huge death toll on your hands to deal with.

Furthermore Hive Fleets can support each other. We already have one fleet that pre-digests worlds for another so that the other can go forth and tackle Demonic infested worlds and not starve because when deamons die they just return to the Warp instead of leaving food on the world (and considering that surface life is only part of the ecosystem and biomatter we have to infer that heavily demonically infested worlds also shed a lot of biomass as the demonic incusion is destroyed.

Another layer to consider is speed. Right now it seems that Tyranids are feeding on habitable worlds and on the most readily and quickly accessible biomass. If they started to get denied over and over again they might well shift tactics. Focusing on Gas Giants; rendering down more mineral components; feeding for longer to get at that rocky material etc...

Ergo it might only slow them down rather than outright stop them. At the same time your faction is still sacrificing worlds.

Basically its a "managed retreat" tactic and that works so long as you've got a plan for how to turn that retreat around before you've sacrificed too much to recover from.

Which introduces another big problem - scale. You don't know the size nor striking location of the Hive Fleets. It's thus very hard to be cost effective when evaluating tactics. If you knew for certain there were only 5 hive fleets in total then yes you could use a managed retreat with staged attacks and a pushback to sacrifice worlds to weaken the fleets and then take them out.
However when the number is unknown its really hard to tell. Those 100 systems you sacrificed to weaken and then kill one hive fleet. Did that stop a significant percentage of them or have you just sacrificed 100 worlds for a 0.0000001 amount of damage to the total Swarm.

**Tyran**

Go around waking up Necron Tomb Worlds and stop interfering with the Silent King's plans.

Sure humanity is going to be exterminated but Necrons have a way better shot vs the Tyranids (although even 5th Necron codex noted that if certain lesser civilizations coughHumanitycough didn't stop being annoying idiots then even the Necrons may find themselves in a bad spot vs the Tyranids).

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Necrons do have a certain upper hand in the form of Gauss, and other weapons which are akin to disintegration.

As well as finding little of use in a fallen Necron of any type, Gauss would leave little in the way of Tyranid corpses to be reabsorbed, so there’s a double whammy.

Necrons could also, in a pinch, make use of the Celestial Orrery to really swat a given Hive Fleet, provided the ramifications of such drastic action don’t lead to worsening consequences.

Other things to consider in terms of Project Keep-Away is it need only be finite. Because whilst I don’t think we can put a definite timescale, sooner or later the Tyranids are going to end up in dire straits. Add in the brutal calculus that yes, it would cost untold billions of lives? Not doing it is hardly going to preserve those lives anyway, and may indeed only make the problem so much worse.

Biggest downside is that even if one can fairly handily evacuate a planet (the sort of if that were it a but, Sir Mix-A-Lot would be a right pest)? That world or those worlds are still part of your overall web of supply. An Agriworld could be evacuated with relative ease due to being sparsely populated, and then blowed up to wreck the Tyranid fleet as it settled down for its picnic. But…that world wasn’t just feeding itself now, was it.

As a crap analogy, it’s like bloodletting as a cure for a bloodborne disease. Yes in theory it could work. But…man. You get your calculations off and you’ve done the disease’s job for it. All you’ve really done is prevent it infecting another body. And even then you can cock that right up.

**Iracundus**

Tyran wrote:
Go around waking up Necron Tomb Worlds and stop interfering with the Silent King's plans.

Sure humanity is going to be exterminated but Necrons have a way better shot vs the Tyranids (although even 5th Necron codex noted that if certain lesser civilizations coughHumanitycough didn't stop being annoying idiots then even the Necrons may find themselves in a bad spot vs the Tyranids).

The Silent King's plans of cutting the galaxy off from the warp may work against the Tyranids and Shadow in the Warp, though I suspect the Hive Mind will be aware of this and will have a showdown with the Necrons. The problem is the Necron Pariah Nexus and others like it around the galaxy are also a threat to humans and other factions because the weakening of the connection to the warp seems to sap the motivation to live from organic beings and makes them catatonic. That is why the humans and other factions are fighting back against the Necron plans as well. The Necron "cure" is as lethal as the original Tyranid problem.

**Tyran**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Other things to consider in terms of Project Keep-Away is it need only be finite. Because whilst I don’t think we can put a definite timescale, sooner or later the Tyranids are going to end up in dire straits. Add in the brutal calculus that yes, it would cost untold billions of lives? Not doing it is hardly going to preserve those lives anyway, and may indeed only make the problem so much worse.

Biggest downside is that even if one can fairly handily evacuate a planet (the sort of if that were it a but, Sir Mix-A-Lot would be a right pest)? That world or those worlds are still part of your overall web of supply. An Agriworld could be evacuated with relative ease due to being sparsely populated, and then blowed up to wreck the Tyranid fleet as it settled down for its picnic. But…that world wasn’t just feeding itself now, was it.

As a crap analogy, it’s like bloodletting as a cure for a bloodborne disease. Yes in theory it could work. But…man. You get your calculations off and you’ve done the disease’s job for it. All you’ve really done is prevent it infecting another body. And even then you can cock that right up.

You aren't the only one doing calculations though. The Tyranids are constantly evaluating their expenses vs their gains, comparing that with what what they know about the capabilities and weakness of their prey and making decisions not only in the short term but also long term.

They can and have ignored biomass rich worlds and even sectors in favor of strategic targets, because they have realized that Imperial forces that get obsessed with resource denial strategies get massive blindspots regarding the overall strategic situation and may leave military and/or logistical key worlds undefended.

And to be blunt, if you try to frame this as a calculus, you are going to lose because you are lacking key information regarding Tyranid numbers, their growth rate, expenses and even fleet positions while the Tyranids in turn seem to have gained a good grasp on Imperial numbers, key worlds, logistical chains, etc

**Overread**

Also its not just numbers - its capabilities as well.

Tyranids change behaviour and hyper evolve. Those two things mean that whatever tactic you create to deal with them might well only function in the short term before they adapt.

Those adaptations are only partly known and the true potential of them is an unknown quantity. Eg that huge planet they are building is totally alien to everything they've done before with hive fleets. What its ultimate purpose is (and it might have more than one) is unknown. It's not even known if its a new thing or something Tyranids have done before, just in other Galaxies.

**Flinty**

The Imperium need to invest in some really big, like colossally huge, flypaper. Can’t eat a world if the bugs are stuck to something in deep space

**Iracundus**

Overread wrote:
Also its not just numbers - its capabilities as well.

Tyranids change behaviour and hyper evolve. Those two things mean that whatever tactic you create to deal with them might well only function in the short term before they adapt.

Those adaptations are only partly known and the true potential of them is an unknown quantity. Eg that huge planet they are building is totally alien to everything they've done before with hive fleets. What its ultimate purpose is (and it might have more than one) is unknown. It's not even known if its a new thing or something Tyranids have done before, just in other Galaxies.

All the above points are true however one thing to note when it comes to evolutionary adaptations is that they generally all cost something such as increased energy spent maintaining such features.

Thicker carapace may provide more protection but be heavier (as well as costing more of the material used to make the carapace), resulting in slower speed. To maintain speed, muscles might be strengthened but then all of this carries metabolic cost.

That is why the Hive Mind does not make super Gaunts that can do everything and be immune to everything. It's too expensive.

We see this in the real world too with bacteria and antibiotic resistance. If such resistant bacteria are cultivated in an antibiotic free environment, they are less successful or end up shedding their antibiotic resistance because the cost of maintaining their resistance is a drag on their fitness and performance.

**Overread**

Another interesting thing is that the Hive Mind is not a perfect singular intelligence as we might understand it. Whilst the Swarm displays many elements of working under a single united control; there's also elements that show that its not all encompassing.

Hive Fleets having to swap DNA with each other and also evolve from random mutation to deal with threats new to a specific Hive Fleet; Tyranids getting separated from the greater whole of the Swarm;

Another argument you can make is that Tyranids might well lose DNA. When you consider that they should have, in theory, an almost infinite library of DNA from earlier conquests outside the Milky Way; its interesting that the have to resort to using chance mutation to help hyper evolve to new situations in the Galaxy. Suggesting that Individual Hive ships not only don't have access to the entire DNA library, but that that library is in constant flux and might not be complete.

So yes this could very well be that Tyranids shedding un-needed DNA whilst travelling the gulf of space between Galaxies meant that when they arrived they had far less than they started with and thus had to re-evolve many things.

Honestly this is one of the things I love about Tyranids. Everything about them is unknown; most of what do know is based on observations of other characters/races in the setting and they are so totally alien in many ways.

Races like Orks, Tau, Eldar and even Necrons are much easier to understand. Tyranids are just on a whole other level of being truly Alien

**Maréchal des Logis Walter**

From most excerpts you can get, the main tactic would actually simply be to kill Norn queens as this disrupts the fleet to a level at which it simply shatters, these organisms being too expensive to bring back quickly.

The speed and volume at which the Tyranid replace losses make it actually almost impossible for the Tyranid to lose to attention. Even the very time you ferry your reinforcments onto the planet is too much compared to do that of the nids. Sure, Kryptmann's tactic is stated to have slowed them down, but that won't last forever and most importantly this won't kill the hive fleet. The only way attrition could work would be in cases like hive fleet kraken where it attacked a front too large (as in, Eldar AND humans at once) and thus bit more than it could chew.

Overall considering how it is portrayed, Tyranids can be beaten only by a decisive blow. Boarding bioships before they awake could be. Killing a norn queen is. Shattering their fleet in orbital fleet to fleet engagement could be as well, as producing ships is very expensive and time consuming.

But really, when I look at operations on the ground, I wonder whether you can actually get that kind of decisive victory.

**Iracundus**

If the Tyranids have already made planetfall, then you have already lost unless you can find a way to take the fight back to the Norn Queens in the hive ships. Human, Ork, Tau, pretty much all other races rely on some form of infrastructure in order to produce the weapons, ammunition, vehicles, or troops to fight. The resources are in the form of things like metals, oil, etc... all of which need to be processed. The Tyranids are recycling the biomass of the planet and throwing them back at you in the form of endless waves of Rippers and Gaunts. They can make use of areas that are otherwise unproductive to other races such as tundra and jungle.

Even if you take out the Dominatrix or Hive Tyrant on the ground, that only buys a little bit of time as even such Synapse creatures are replaceable.

That sense of futility of fighting on the ground is what was conveyed in the book Warriors of Ultramar which depicted the Tarsis tendril. The Ultramarines and humans on the planet struggled at great effort to hold out against various waves but this was all ultimately going to be futile until they found the McGuffin toxin and launched a decapitation strike on the Norn Queen in the one remaining fully mature hive ship in orbit (the others had been killed off by various means in space combat earlier in the book). If they had not done so, they would have ultimately lost to the endless waves of Tyranids sooner or later.

**Maréchal des Logis Walter**

Reminds me always of that oh so awesome final mission in DoW2. So cinematic

**Olthannon**

In my line of work, we have a whole sect of xenonologists who focus on IPM or integrated pest management.

The ultimate trick would be to terraform a few dead worlds with fresh biomass that has been genetically engineered. A bait sector that would draw the fleet rather than the Kryptman blow everything up. As the Tyranids arrive and feed, the genetically engineered biomass should have some sort of viral component or misc super poison that works to simultaneously draw more to the sector and causes mass death once the biomass is returned to the ships.

Of course the ultimate ultimate trick would be a way to hide that fact from the Hive Mind so that it keeps happening again and again.

**Iracundus**

Olthannon wrote:
In my line of work, we have a whole sect of xenonologists who focus on IPM or integrated pest management.

The ultimate trick would be to terraform a few dead worlds with fresh biomass that has been genetically engineered. A bait sector that would draw the fleet rather than the Kryptman blow everything up. As the Tyranids arrive and feed, the genetically engineered biomass should have some sort of viral component or misc super poison that works to simultaneously draw more to the sector and causes mass death once the biomass is returned to the ships.

Of course the ultimate ultimate trick would be a way to hide that fact from the Hive Mind so that it keeps happening again and again.

No toxin or virus seems to work more than once on the Tyranids, and even then pretty much everything other than the Norn Queen is expendable. That was the whole plot of Warriors of Ultramar: finding a surviving 1st generation Tyranid from the initial planetfall and using that to create a tailored poison that would work on the Norn Queen. All the subsequent generations had started mutating and adapting so were different enough from the Norn Queen so as to make them unsuitable to create such a toxin. Even then, the Tech-Priest said it would only work on this one tendril.

Norn Queens are also buried deep within the depths of the hive ships so the only way they could guarantee the toxin was successfully delivered to target was to actually board the ship and deliver it in person.

**Maréchal des Logis Walter**

To be fair, it's always been kind of the dilemma we ever stated on the internet: while that makes them cool, from a lore standpoints the nids are just a tad "too much", and the level of shenanigan they pull up makes it hard to not have them wipe everybody out and still remain write a credible story.

**Gert**

The whole thing with the Tyranids is that they can't be beaten with any sort of conventional warfare.

Even if you do manage to beat a tendril, it's ruined the world you're fighting on, and by Current Year M41, the Hive Mind isn't sending one tendril into a sector, it's sending five.
Even if you beat those five in your sector, the next sector over has fallen because troops were diverted and only a small garrison remained.

The only hope anyone has to stop an invasion is widescale genocide of their own worlds (or enemy worlds in the case of the Aeldari).

**Haighus**

Agree with the stuff upthread, but want to add the caveat that small hive fleets can be beaten during ground invasions. Seems to be more likely on cold worlds.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

I’m unsure on the Hive Fleet’s overall intelligence.

Rather than being sentient as we understand, I see it as more being an incredible level of instinct. Yes it does of course adapt, and rapidly so. But what I’m not convinced about (but of course remain open to citation and references) is that it can make leaps of logic which would make them truly intelligent.

For instance, when the Tau found warrior forms became resistant to Pulse weapon fire, I don’t interpret that as the Fleet actively studying the problem and devising a specific counter. Rather I think it’s more it’s look at whatever would pass for “after action report”, and favour genetic builds which proved resilient. The difference there being there’s lack of questioning the “why”, and going down the relatively blind evolutionary path of “well of course this form was favoured, because it was the most successful in the environment”. Just with some kind of guiding consciousness to apply whatever allowed that to other warrior forms, producing essentially sub-species rapidly.

**mrFickle**

What you need to do is figure out how alter human genes in such a way that it poisons tyranids if they’re eaten. Then perform the gene therapy on a few billion humans and put them in the path a hive fleet.

Ain’t nothing but a thing to sacrifice that many people of your in the Ordo Xenos

**Gert**

Except poison doesn't work because as soon as the Hive Mind figures out organisms are dying to poison, it adapts their biology.

At best it stems the tide for a bit before everything is back to business as usual.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Yeah I don’t think any kind of genetic tinkering is at all wise when considering how to best Tyranids.

It’s like trying to dissuade me from eating a pizza because you’ve added Hot Sauce.

**Overread**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m unsure on the Hive Fleet’s overall intelligence.

Rather than being sentient as we understand, I see it as more being an incredible level of instinct. Yes it does of course adapt, and rapidly so. But what I’m not convinced about (but of course remain open to citation and references) is that it can make leaps of logic which would make them truly intelligent.

I disagree, I think its very intelligent, but has a few factors that come into play

1) Imperfect control. The Hive Mind itself appears very smart and capable of creating generals (Hive Tyrants) capable of organising and conducting warfare on a vast scale. Tyranids are more than capable of creating highly intelligent strains when they want too; but it seems that they operate "kind of" on their own.
As if the Hive Mind creates a super smart Hive Tyrant and says "take that world" but the specifics of how are left to the Hive Tyrant itself. So its limited by its intelligence level; its direct experiences through its Hive Fleet and so forth.

2) Reliance on instinct/biological elements. A bit like how in The Matrix series, machines could not disobey several parts of their core programming. Similarly Tyranids, whilst very intelligent are "bound" by elements of their biology. They are "shackled" and still wearing their earpiece. Of course that is also what gives them their bonuses too, so its not one sided, but it means that they have to do things in a certain way.

3) Single Hive Mind, but not singular of thought. This is a tricky one to explain, but in general my thought is that the Hive Mind is less of a single thinking entity and more of a state of mindset across the whole Tyranid Swarm. Ergo the Hive Mind is more a general set of wills, desires, directives and thinking that is built up from the collective of all the Tyranids at once. With higher level ones having greater sway and impact over lesser. This would explain how Tyranids can drift in and out of contact with the Hive Mind and yet still remain functional; and whilst not creating constant disagreement when re-joined.

4) Individuality is a thing. The Swarm Lord proves that there is a concept within the Tyranids of individuals. Of course an individual still follows the will of the Swarm, but it appears to have some degree of agency on its own. I would wager Norn Queens are similar - much like Starcraft Zerg Cerebrates - in that they act of their own ideas; just that they are also part of the all swarm as well.

Others have likened the Hive Mind to the mind of a human whilst the Tyranids that form it are more like the cells of a body. All in agreement at once in heading in the direction the Brain tells them too; but at the same time operating within the boundaries and guidelines of the body to do their own thing. Capable of working directly for the body's will; but also some elements being outside of direct control.

Ergo you can pick up a cup off a table by commanding your body; but you can't command it to increase bloodflow to a specific spot. You have to do actions that might result in that desired end state. Similarly there are elements totally outside of one's own control - eg the release and use of white blood cells in fighting infection.

**bullisariuscowl**

TACKLING a hive fleet? You must have massive arms if you can do that!

**BlaxicanX**

Starving them out worked as a tactic but the problem is that it was a half-measure. Kryptman destroyed all those planets to deny the Tyranids biomass, but the fleet was still allowed to travel relatively unmolested from system to system. In theory, the trick would be to not only deprive them of biomass through scorched earth tactics, but to also harry them the entire way. Both the Tau and the Eldar have been able to go toe-to-toe with the Tyranids in fleet battles- in fact one of the things that kept Tau in the game against Gorgon is that their fleet despite being outnumbered was able to consisently destroy Narvhals and slow down the Hive Fleet's advance to the point that the Tau could maneuver reinforcements and evacuations around contested systems.Since the win condition for Tyranids is getting to a planet to harness its resources, it stands to reason that strategically, hit and run attacks on a traveling Hive Fleet would be devstating. If you don't allow your forces to engage in a pitched battle with the Tyranids (and you have literally infinite space to maneuver) then the Hive Fleet's decisions are to either break off from pushing toward a planet and commit to chasing down your harrying fleet, or ignore them and let itself get whittled down.

Almost all of the advantages that Tyranids have in terrestial combat don't really apply in void warfare. The only hiccup is Shadow making long-range coordination difficult, but I don't really buy that it makes hive fleets undetecable. To the contrary, I imagine that the shadow is probably fairly easy to distinguish by astropaths who are outside of it. When gazing at the warp how do you not notice the utterly massive, moving black hole?

imo the biggest reason that the Imperium struggles against the Tyranids is because of their military doctrine. The Imperium always wants to form either an unstoppable hammer or an unbreakable wall- both strategies play right into the Tyranids' hands.

**Altruizine**

Old Man Grotsnik and Underread, you both give the energy of "guy who hasn't kept up with the background since 3rd edition, and refuses to update the headcanon they crafted in 2001"

If you want a direct homework assignment, that's easy: read the novel The Devastation of Baal.

I've lost count of the questionable assertions/suggestions you've each introduced in this thread, but they include:

- that the Hivemind is not a singular intelligence
- that the Imperium evacuates planets (lol)
- that Tyranid evolution is random
- that hive beasts always have some level of independence and cannot be directly "puppeted" by the Hivemind
- that the Hivemind "loses DNA"

I realize that's it's extremely easy to just go, "if you disagree show me a quotation," but that reminds me of someone who'd say something like, "I personally don't believe that vaccines work, but if you disagree you can show me a source." You've apparently missed two decades of background development -- it's going to be hard for anyone to fill you in with a single quotation, and it's your responsibility to catch up if you desire accuracy.

I will post one section from the aforementioned novel, partly because it indirectly addresses some of the ideas in the thread, but mostly because it's one of the coolest parts in the book (which is unfortunately three quarters bolter porn, as it goes).

The lictor looked like a creature unto itself. It moved as a solitary organism. It had operated on its own for years, far away from the hive fleet. But it was not apart from the hive mind. That was the mistake the prey always made. Even at this corpuscular level, it was a mistake to see the lictor as a lictor, one of millions; there were not many, there was one. The lictor was the lictor. Every iteration was a copy, better than perfect for aeons of improvement, party to the actions, mistakes and successes of every other lictor that had come before. Welded to the very genes of its being were untold millions of years of experience. And it was on Baal just as it was simultaneously on a thousand other worlds throughout the galaxy.

It put ancient lessons into action. Sight was the easiest sense to fool. The lictor moved at night, when it was harder to see. Chromatic microscales lent it near perfect chameleonic ability even in the full light of day. Deformable organ clusters embedded in its skin allowed it to change its shape somewhat, enabling it to take on the rough texture of stone, or mimic fronds of vegetation. Smell was a more primal sense, harder to deceive because of it. The lictor managed that too. It had virtually no scent. Only when it flooded the air with pheromone trails to guide its kin beasts did its emissions become noticeable. By then it was too late. Most prey could hear, so it made no sound when it moved. Special arrangements of hairs baffled the whisper of its limbs moving over one another.

More esoteric senses were equally well accounted for. Its electromagnetic profile was minimal. Its brain case was shielded by internal bone structures against energy leakage. The nerves in its body were similarly cloaked. Its hooves were shaped to make the minimum of vibration, and although it could not entirely stop the perturbation of the air made by its movements, its chitinous plates were fluted in precise molecular, fractal patterns to minimise its wake. It gave off no heat. It shed no cells unless damaged. Its psychic link with the hive mind was like spider silk, gossamer thin, strong, and almost impossible to detect.

More adaptations heaped on top of more. Unlike a natural organism, which loses certain gifts in favour of others as evolution pushes it down a particular path, the lictor’s advantages were retained, new gifts stacked atop the others. Its genetic structure was incredibly complex. Within every cell was billions of years’ worth of adaptation, culled from every lictor, coiled up one over the other. Anything useful to its role, no matter how inconsequential seeming, it retained forever.

Every machine and psychic ability the Imperium had geared towards detection, the lictor could evade. The hive mind had consumed far more advanced races than mankind. Infiltrating Baal was child’s play. There was no need for it to employ a fraction of its considerable talent

bonus:

In the [Swarm Lord's] eyes glimmered an ancient and powerful intellect. As old as he was, Dante felt like a newborn babe compared to the intelligence staring at him through that unblinking gaze. He sensed that there were two beings looking at him. The monster, and the being that controlled it. They were separate, yet one. A sense of crushing psychic might emanated from it, so great its grasp encompassed galaxies. There was sophistication there, and terrifying intelligence, but all were outweighed by its bottomless, eternal hunger.

For the moment that the man and the monster stared into one another’s souls, Dante pitied it. The hunger of the hive mind made the Red Thirst trivial by comparison.

**BlaxicanX**

lmao, and people complain about marine spank in GW writing. Every time a Hive Fleet loses these dudes die in droves, yet somehow they're completely invisible to the naked eye, completely scentless, completely silent, can't be picked up on any wavelengths, can't even be seen through the warp despite literally being psychic creatures themselves. One would think there'd be hundreds of them skulking around Macgragge when in reality Catachan hunt them for sport in stories like Deathworlder.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Go back and read my comments.

First, the thread is a discussion, not a lecture. And deliberately so.

You’ll also see where I for one clearly say I’m entirely open to citation and reference for conflicting sources.

Why? Because there’s a lot of source material out there, and it’s often conflicting. Thus I don’t present myself as an absolute authority with a complete knowledge.