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They project a shadow of the warp that I’ve always thought of as a negative energy or sort of projecting the pariah effect into that realm.

So what happens if they try to go into the eye of terror or one of the many rifts that now litters the galaxy

They absolutely can. It’s a tear in realspace where the Warp and Reality intermix.

What happens after that? I for one honestly don’t know. But I’d venture Nothing Good.

Whatever it is that generates their biological equivalent to Geller Fields will surely eventually fail, if only from persistent strain of the generating organ. And once that’s failed? It’s Daemons Literally Up Yer Hoop All Day Every Day. And potentially even the bio-ships being possessed.

But the Shadow in the Warp is, so far, only experienced in Real Space. What happens in the Neither Arthur Nor Martha space of the Eye, Maelstrom or the Great Rift?

The Shadow isn't a true block between realspace and the Warp; it's just the collective psychic buzz of millions of Tyranid organisms, sort of like radio static that drowns out all other frequencies.

I guess its a debate on how much biomass there is to eat in the Eye of Terror.

I mean on one hand I would say not very much. On the other, there's always just enough to facilitate Black Crusades, so who knows.

Oh it’s lousy with Daemon Worlds.

Most, but by no means all, have mortal inhabitants. So there are nom noms for the Hive Mind.

But given Daemons can exist there for far longer than in real space, I suspect the brutal calculus will go quickly against the Tyranids. Especially as you don’t need to actively summon the Daemons first.

Tyel wrote:
I guess its a debate on how much biomass there is to eat in the Eye of Terror.

I mean on one hand I would say not very much. On the other, there's always just enough to facilitate Black Crusades, so who knows.

I think there are loads of planets full of billions of cultists (if the narrative requires it)

The entire Warzone: Valedor campaign is based around this. A splinter of Hive Fleet Kraken gets spit out of a warp rift called the Vortex of Despair, putting it on a collision course with Hive Fleet Leviathan, where it is believed their combined genetic collections would end up creating a huge boon for the Tyranids, and it is up to the Eldar to stop this from happening.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But the Shadow in the Warp is, so far, only experienced in Real Space. What happens in the Neither Arthur Nor Martha space of the Eye, Maelstrom or the Great Rift?

They are doing fine in the Maelstrom in the 10th edition codex.

Following Hive Fleet Leviathan's defeat at Baal thanks to the Great Rift's emergence, thousands of bio-ships are scattered by empyric storms. Hundreds are cast into the Maelstrom, where Huron Blackheart, one of the most powerful Heretic Astartes warlords in the galaxy, and lord of the Red Corsairs, rules. Bio-ships fall upon Blackheart's fleets in huge numbers, and merciless combat rages between his forces and the Tyranids. The power of the colossal warp tempest in which they fight proves to be no detriment to the hive fleet, whose ships spawn neurobeasts and psykers organisms at a prodigious rate as they accumulate biomass.

10th edition Tyranid codex, page 23

Would love to see Huron's perspective of "suddenly Tyranids in what should be his unassailable warp fortress". Must be extremely annoying.


Edit: for an official AU "what if" example, in the BFG2A Tyranid campaign Hive Fleet Leviathan invades the Eye of Terror.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They absolutely can. It’s a tear in realspace where the Warp and Reality intermix.

What happens after that? I for one honestly don’t know. But I’d venture Nothing Good.

You assume it'll be bad for the tyranids, but I think such an encounter would just be a pain for both sides.

Tyranids feed on biomass, which daemons lack. Daemons feed on souls and emotions, which tyranids lack. They can't draw nourishment from each other, infect each other, or assimilate each other's traits. They don't cancel each other out like an acid and a base. Neither side grows stronger from defeating the other, like when a virus and the immune system are engaged in an arms race of mutual adaptation. Chaos and tyranids exist on different spectra, in different contexts... alien to each other.

A tyranid hive fleet inside the Warp would be more akin to a bee inside your car. There are no flowers for the bee to collect pollen from, and conversely, you don't see the bee as a tasty snack. You're both capable of hurting each other (a fight that you would ultimately win), but it would avail you nothing. In the end, the easiest and safest solution is simply to open the window and let the bee out.

.

Oh I assume nothing to be fair.

But where the warp and realspace intersect, DNA seems to do very very odd and unexpected things. And to a species which can devour, read, interpret and then reinterpret DNA, what ideas might the Hive Mind get?

And if the Chaos Forces win? That’s awful lot of heavily combat experienced forces coming from those worlds.