THE TYRANIDS

World Eater Insectoids

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"There is a cancer eating at the Imperium. With each decade it advances deeper, leaving drained, dead worlds in its wake. This horror, this abomination, has thought and purpose which functions on an unimaginable, galactic scale and all we can do is try to stop the swarms of bio-engineered monsters it unleashes upon us by instinct. We have given the horror a name to salve our fears; we call it the Tyranid race, but if it is aware of us at all it must know us only as Prey."

— Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak at the Conclave of Har

The Tyranids are an extragalactic composite species of hideous, insectoid xenos that is actually a space-faring ecosystem comprised of innumerable different bioforms which are all variations on the same genetic theme. The Tyranids are unlike any other intelligent species encountered by Humanity. They are the ultimate predators; to them, all living things, from the lowliest insect to the most advanced starfaring civilisation, are mere prey. Only now are the inhabitants of the galaxy realising the scale of the threat; unless the Tyranids can be stopped, it will mean nothing less than the extinction of all.

The Tyranid species is ultimately dedicated solely to its own survival, propagation and evolutionary advancement. The Tyranids collectively form a monstrous superorganism that travels across the universe in their great hive fleets of biomechanical Hive Ships, systematically consuming all other biomatter to enable their own rapid evolution and reproduction. The Tyranids are likened to a galactic swarm consuming everything in its path, feeding on entire worlds and leaving only dead husks in their wake. Their threat is such that an unprotected planet can be infested and stripped clean of all its organic material in a matter of solar weeks without even slowing down the advance of the hive fleet. All Tyranid organisms are "synaptic" (psychically-reactive), and each Tyranid creature within a hive fleet shares and contributes to a communal Hive Mind, which allows the trillions of beings comprising the Tyranid Hive Fleets to communicate and organise instantaneously on a staggering scale.

The Tyranids are not native to the galaxy; they have journeyed across the unspeakable cold of the void, where time and space conspire to hold the stars apart with inconceivable distances. Yet the Tyranids crossed this expanse nonetheless, moving through the empty darkness for countless millennia to reach the rim of the galaxy.

The mentality of the Tyranid approach to warfare can be described with the phrase "quantity has a quality all its own." From the "lowly" Ripper, to the deadly Hive Tyrant and beyond, the signature of the Tyranid species is that they overwhelm their foes with sheer numbers, reproducing massive numbers of highly virulent organisms in record time from the biochemical soup that they derive from the biospheres of the worlds they consume

The components of a Tyranid hive fleet travel almost exclusively in large groups known as "swarms" that possess specialised biomechanical creatures for destroying and consuming a wide variety of prey life forms.

The Tyranids have evolved sophisticated methods for facilitating genetic transfer across species boundaries. As a result, a significant goal of any Tyranid invasion is acquisition of useful new biological traits from other lifeforms.

These are used by the Hive Mind to enhance the Tyranids' effectiveness in consuming new worlds to gain more of the necessary organic raw materials for further reproduction and directed evolution. All Tyranids are reproduced by a single, highly intelligent female bioform known as a Norn-Queen. A hive fleet's Norn-Queens are the most important Tyranids within the fleet, for if they are injured or killed the Tyranids cannot reproduce their numbers from the captured bio-mass. As a result, Norn-Queens can be found only at the heart of the largest and most-well defended Tyranid Hive Ships.

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