"Theory of the Hive Mind"

[God_Grinder]

hey guys me and steve wher chattin about the hive mind and where delving into its relation to the warp. does it use the warp? does it exist inside the warp? so on and so forth. then it came to me that the hive mind could possably be a chaos god or entity that transended the warp and excaped into realspace and found the power and ability to survive off of raw genetic material as apposed to the warp bound entities that devour souls. its seems to make sence. what are your guys thoughts on the origin and of the hive mind and its ties to the warp?

[SteveBerenyi]

i was thinking that the "entity" became so powerful that it at some point tore through the fabric of the warp and manifested in realspace.

It would do lots to explain the Warp suffusion in their presence and their excelent use of it as a shock tactic as well.

[Biadetic]

nice theory, i havent much to say on the matter but i agree that they may haps well be a taint or source of the warp power to be found within the hive mind. perhaps as its power grew it manged to disassociate itself with the warps and reign free of its own accord?

[experiment 626]

the thing is though; the 'nids aren't naitive to our galaxcy! who knows which galaxcy they originated from or how they even began their evolution???
their effect on the warp could very easily be a naturally evolved ability

they definately have nothing to do with chaos however! while tyranid organisims can become corrupted by chaos, it is indeed very, very rare and many believe that it can only come about once the individual organisim's link to the hive mind has been severed...

basically as my mate put it, "think of the tyranids has a highly evolved insect colony from hell!"
they simply grow and adapt to each new threat as they meet it. perhaps when the first tyranid vanguard organisims crossed into our galaxcy, they were indeed twisted by the warp? maybe the psychic presence of the hive mind has adapted to combat the threat of the daemonic? then again, there's also the fact that the tyranid race is also emotionless which is the polar opposite of chaos - the warp is feed by the emotions of all living things!

cheers!

[God_Grinder]

yeah could be just natural eveolution stitch, but your also saying that the warp does not extend byond our own galaxy? that doesnt seem right to me. also it makes sence that it would be polar oposit to chaos seing that it has learnt to survive in realspace.

[experiment 626]

well, it more the 'totally emotionless' part rather than simply being able to live & survive in space that makes the 'nids pretty much immune to the effects of chaos...
chaos is all about raw emotion being twisted into your worst nightmares. the 'nids simply consume all in their path like some giant animal. they don't have any notions of galactic conquest or feeling of hate or such - they're just always hungry!

cheers!

[God_Grinder]

Bump!
cmon is that it? i thought we had more nid players.and fluff monkies

[Night Shadow]

Is it possibly that the nids could of been created by another race, as where the Orks and Eldar made from the Old Ones? Maybe something long ago escaped our Galaxy and landed in another, maybe after the Necron War and created the nids to come back and destroy all?

[Wakim]

Well, the "Old ones messed up big time" is a highly likely but unproveable scenario

Just like most scenarios actually

[Dan296]

nah, no way were the nids created by the old ones. they come from an entirely differant galaxy!!
but as for that galaxy: is it full of bare rocks? and what exactly IS the hive mind? is there some single entity that is IT or is the hive mind the thing reffered to as the link between the norn queens, and the norn queens are the highest up the chain you can go? that would make sense actually for the nids development. like an ant colony, the warrior ants became more specialized, became....welll....warriors. the 'queen ant' became the norn queen, and so on.

but like humans, nids developed a psyker tendency but they controlled it and honed it onto their own thing.

[Wakim]

Dan. do you remember what the OO did not so many milenia ago?

They left the galaxy

[Vorafex]

I kinda go with the 'nids using the warp like a "fast lane" for travel...ie. swimming through space, but it definitely holds NO DANGER whatsoever to them at all. Yep, the demons living in warpspace are pretty much non-exsistant to the 'nids and wouldn't be able to affect them from the warp-side in the least.
The hivemind power called "shadow in the warp"...thats the clue, the race as a whole seems to either dampen psychic enegry, which is what feeds the warp, in a vast area or moreover...they seem to "hijack" or "overpower" an enormious amount of area surrounding their swarm. This basically shuts down all warp related abilities, including communication...what if this is a side effect of the hiveminds synapse network...a vastly powerful and totally alien thought process invading the warp, that is made up of human, ork, and eldar thoughts and emotions and drowning out the natural signal with something of their own design...just an idea...

[Icarus Athrasuriel]

My personal take on it is that the Tyranids evolved naturally. They weren't created by the Old Ones, and to suggest that they were created by something else implies that the 'something (or someone) else' was intelligent enough to do it. And, may I ask, what's intelligent about creating Nids?

Therefore, I'd discount a creation theory. So, evolution seems the only other option.

When it comes to their effects in the Warp, one must remember that, much like the Nids can create organic weapons, they may indeed be capable of creating organic means of tapping into the Warp, like the Eldar did with machines. For this concept, it's easier to think of such a system not as a means of transporting matter, but a means of transporting information, like using the internet to send e-mails. If the Nids can connect all of their creatures to such a network, then the Hive Mind takes shape.

So, basically, IMO the Nids evolved (A hell of alot, far longer than anything alive in our galaxy, perhaps even before the Old Ones) into creatures that could adapt at an impressive rate (We can adapt to mild changes within a few generations, so imagine it like the Nids are adapting to each threat like human family would to a new climate. The original migrants may get a tan, pick up the accent etc. Through the next few generations the family will undergo more dramatic changes (Taller, smaller, to suit terrain etc). The Nids just do this faster). And the Hive Mind evolved through a similar process, with a network connecting offspring to the parents (E.g. Nids to Hive Ships and so on).

[Vorafex]

I read one thread speculating that all the hivefleets are actually just one big swarm...kinda like a supa-swarm. Hrmmmmmm...lets conjecture for a moment...
If there is a school of say, 100 fish, and 50 of those fish trun left instead of right...there's now 2 schools of fish...hmmmmmm...interesting...
Plausible in theory...but, we may never know for sure.

[dagoose]

I've been thinkin on this one for a while. i have basically 2 theories:
1) as they evolved throughout their history the developed a psychic link to stay in contact to help take down larger prey. as this grew it sort of took on a life of its own (sort of like the terminator thing "skynet") evolving into a psychic identity involving the needs of base animal thinking, consume and reproduce.

2)

[Night Shadow]

I am sorry, I did directly mean the Nids where created from the Old Ones, just referring to the fact that the Eldar and Orks where created races, so maybe the Nids are also, but not saying it was the Old Ones. You guys are probably right though. They were probably created on there own, by a higher power of course.

[Zeb[edee]]

The Hive Mind is actually a Tyranid Player at Games Workshop Leicester who in huma guise goes by the name of Steve...

I think it is like a giant Norn Queen sort of thing which just has amazingly awesome Pyschic powers.

[dagoose]

steve... norn queen........ STEVE MCQEEN I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!!!

[Templar Mikeel]

I've always thought of the Hive Mind as some big uber 'nid. Sorta' like a massive version of a Tyranid ship, but a bit more like a planet with insane mental/psychic powers.
What do you guys think? Is the Hivemind a big bug, or more of a psychic thing that all 'nids share?

[TheKiller333]

Well, I've always considered the Hive Mind as a sort of.. huge... blob? Well not blob, but anyway.. huge Nid that is rooted (Sort of) into a planet.. damn, Starcraft has poisoned my mind. But it makes sense if it is actually a Nid, but it'd have to be EXTREMELY Psychic to control all the other 'nids.. unless in controls the Norn Queens and they in turn control the race? Eurgh... ow my head.

[ilovemybugs]

i had always figured the hive mind was just the psychic force that extended from whatever makes norn queens to hive ships to synapse creatures to everything else... maybe there is a big web between all the hive fleets (or maybe it is all just one big swarm that the galaxy hasn't seen yet) but i always thought it started with the...whatever makes norn queens.

[Lord Aulianas Darakathos]

Alright, let's see what my sparse fluff skills can add to this argument.

I've always seen the Hive Mind as an ant colony, but with limitations. It is possible that they were antlike, but the queens gained the form of semi-sentient instinct that they now have. As they eventually evolved and ate everything on their planet, it might have registered within their proto-minds that 'we need off this planet before we starve.'

The idea that the Hivemind consists of every Tyranid is... implausible, as otherwise the 'node' effect would be unneeded. On top of this, that would mean that, due to territorial and self-preservation instinct, they could very well start attacking each other.

This, along with the 'Belly of the Beast' short story, in which the Hive Mind directly contacts a SM librarian scout, implies that there is some form of damn near omniscient mind in the background, such as the Starcraft Overmind.

As for the Shadow of the Warp thing, it might just be that the Hive Mind makes every Tyranid, even gaunts, low-level psykers, too low level to do anything more than communicate with other Tyranids. This, in turn, is also supported by the Ciaphas Cain books, in which Jurgen disorients any nearby Tyranids, on account of his Blank-hood. This massive concentration of psykers, even as weak as they are, could very well cause the 'ripple' effect, as if one had tossed a stone into a pond. This could disrupt any and all astropathic communication, as the sheer amount of stones being thrown would cause too much interference.

This also might explain why the Warp is so Chaotic... after all, every Eldar is a psyker, the Tyranids are stones, and human psykers are more powerful than either the Eldar or the Tyranids, but have a LOT less psykic discipline than the Eldar.

Oh, and the all-psyker theory is boosted by one word: Zoanthrope.


EDIT: Im a Necron player. Why do I know so much about Tyranids?

[DuskRaider]

Haha, 'Nids naturally avoid you. Which makes sense, why would a super organism go anywhere in the vicinity of a creature that completely decimates planets and devoids them of all life? Doesn't help much if someone already sucked your food source dry.

Back on topic... Tyranids kind of remind me of the Megarachnids or whatever from Murder. Perhaps they're an offshoot? Anyhow, Tyranids aren't anything new to the system, they must have come through the galaxy at some point in the past.

Even in Pre-Heresy, there were Genestealers across the systems, either on death worlds or space hulks. And what of the Catachan devil? My theory is... the species has been around for billions of years. They have spanned the entire universe, sucked it dry, and by the time they reach one end, the other has already flourished again, so they start the process over.

They're exactly like an ant colony... think army ants. They move from one point to another, anything that stands in their way is instantly destroyed. They have no sentience for the most part (Genestealers being the exception), they live to feed and ensure their survival.

[ilovemybugs]

Originally Posted by Lord Aulianas Darakathos

The idea that the Hivemind consists of every Tyranid is... implausible, as otherwise the 'node' effect would be unneeded. On top of this, that would mean that, due to territorial and self-preservation instinct, they could very well start attacking each other.

well the thing is tyranids DO attack each other sometimes, like... 2 different hive fleets. it says so in the codex. i agree with the idea that tyranids have been all over the galaxy, universe, whichever. but the node thing does work i think, it's just smaller as you go down the line, with gaunts being pretty much completely reliant and going up from there, with the genestealers and biovores not needing it, but it helps.

[PrivateLucky]

I think tyranids just evolve naturally. Due to their highly suicidal nature (they throw themselves into bullets, ok?), they keep dying and those that live have the genes to survive and those that do not have those genes die quickly being replaced by more tyranids with the surviving gene. I think they are from a different galaxy and their nature and origins are purely animalistic. Therefore their eating and destruction is not due to any evil or chaotic nature but just a fight to survive.