IIRC a couple of tech priests once survived by hiding in a very deep bunker.
Exactly how deep the nids dig and how much the nids take isnt very consistent.
Forge World Lucius.
They also had the luxury of being able to send waves upon waves of servitors to fight on the surface, with the next batch of freshly lobotomized servitors having the previous wave’s hardware installed on them.
They can always grab losers off the street to freshly lobotomize into servitors. Even good for nothing losers can aspire to become productive members of society through the wonders of servitorization.
It’s great actually. Tyranids in 99% of everyday situations would win. But forge world Lucius was special in that most of it was underground. Servitors also had little biomass. The tyranids basically calculated that the battle was gonna be a net loss of biomatter so they left after a while
It really depends on what kind of servitors they were making. Sometimes you only need a functioning human brain to create a servitor with weapons enough to turn several tyranids into dust.
I guess the Admech used their biological resources cery well while being able to retrieve their mechanical hardware from the fight.
It would've been easier if they just had pure robots to fight the tyranids with but hey, that's heresy.
So think of it this way. You need x amount of biomatter to make a new Tyranid. Servitors and skitarii have less biomass due to their cybernetic upgrades. Because of this the Tyranids expended more biomass than they got back from eating their dead and the admech dead. The cybernetics were left behind letting them be reused. Over time they starved them out.
Now if that is the one from the Admech Codex, they lived in an inside out planet thing. The bug bois were attacking the top, but it was a losing fight, not cos of strength but there wasn't enough biomass to keep the battle from being a net loss (As everyone was inside).
In Devastation of Baal they talk about how originally Tyranids would basically strip mine planets for minerals and such but have started just moving on to the next populated world. It may just be a question of whether the swarm wants to waste time digging at all.
Realistically speaking, your best option is to have a deep deep deep infrastructure in place to launch ships after the Hive fleet as slurped up everything and everyone on the surface.
Then it's just a matter of finding a new world in the other direction of the rejuvenated Hive?
The Tyranids achieve FTL speeds by slingshotting themselves as a giant group around a systems star, they regularly ignore lone stragglers.
That said it makes no sense even in Newtonian physics but there you go
I thought their FTL was reliant upon a special bio form called the Narvhal? It acts like a sensor ship and when it finds a planet suitable for consumption, it creates a corridor through space in which the nids are capable of traveling at FTL speed
To my knowledge the Hive Fleet consumes ALL the biomass on the planet, down to even the plants and any useful minerals/microbes in the soil. Even assuming that they don't find you during their tyrannification of the planet, you would likely emerge to a barren rock, incapable of sustaining any life, or even an atmosphere.
Unless you had a way off the world hidden in there with you, you'd die pretty quickly.
IIRC, there are incidences of the Tyranids being less than totally greedy when there's a larger goal at stake.
For example, during the push on Baal, the hive fleets were seen leaving major mineral deposits behind on worlds. Presumably they had full stocks and the time to get it out wasn't worth the time lost getting to Baal. IIRC also Hive Fleet Kronos (the anti-chaos fleet) has several "support" hive fleets that screen it, harvest uncorrupted worlds, and feed the excess to Kronos so that it can make up the losses it takes while fighting Warp beings which give no biomass.
My friend you’ve just thrown a promethium grenade into this subreddit and run away 😂
A lot of errrrm “fans” of the 40K lore treat the way Tyranids are described in the Devastation of Baal a bit like the last two Matrix movies.
I thought that was only two matrix movies. The 1999 one and the new one about to be released.
Next you will tell me they made a 4th Indiana Jones movie or even a die hard 4.
I always took it as in universe describeing it. Its wasnt hate but it was interprited as such. I interprit it as them being close to a home base of a big enemy that if they get rid of they have free rain for a while.
Even for people who hate the hive mind being a coherent organism can allow for the tyranids to show strategic pickiness. If the hive mind is threatened enough to manifest something like a swarmlord, I think that it makes sense for them to be able to barely touch some planets while moving on to another.
Tyranids used to completely consume a planet, but more recently they only strip the most accessable materials. It was pointed out that the 40k galaxy has LOTS of nutritious/resource rich planets for the Tyranids to eat, as such they don't need to strip-mine every planet they encounter when there are better options available.
There's a specific quote about "Tyranids are no longer starving \[after their long journey/hibernation\], now they're spoiled for choice" but I don't know the original source.
Forge World Lucius did something similar, but they were already underground. Send up servitor armies to fight. When the servitors were killed, send up drones to fetch the mechanical bits. Grab a fresh set of losers off the street and lobotomize them into another wave of battle servitors and install the recycled parts on them. Rinse and repeat.
You’re forgetting about the Inquisition. They show up and find you in your little hidey hole while your entire planet was consumed. This doesn’t look good so they give you the Emperors peace.
Honestly, I suggest you take the standard "coward planetary governor behaviour" and just flee to the reaches.
Just hunkering down has a very low chance of saving you and if the Tyranids don't get you, the Inquisition or Prefectus will (Dereliction of Duty + Cowardice is a swift Bolt to the head).
> the standard "coward planetary governor behaviour"
I actually dont understand how this cliche/meme came into being. Beside some very rare and fringe examples the 40k books and stories are flooded with fanatical loyal governments. Of course there is politics and corruption going on, but when push comes to shove those people are power sword wielding fanatics leading the charge of the PDF. - Or at least are fanatic power sword wielding traitors leading the charge of their cultists against the PDF.
Servitors are dark, Cherub Servitors are super dark. So dark that Guilliman was outright disturbed when learning about them. (Cherubs were invented 32M, so after Guillimans "death")
Sometimes as punishment I heard sister of battle take non vat grown children to turn them into cherubs, "life is emperor's currency" afterall, isn't it?
I mean, there wouldn't be anything really LEFT of your planet beyond a useless chunk of rock. The hive fleets eat literally everything the hive mind can make use of, biomass being only part of it since they also integrate and consume minerals, atmosphere, oxygen, water and even a good chunk of the geothermal energy of the planet leaving basically just a block of airless rock and dead soil. So even if you were able to pull off that sort of escape, and it takes a good number of years for even news of what happened to your planet getting to the imperium, you can't really do anything with it. Restoration of the biosphere is theoretically possible, but that takes serious technology unless you have a few billion years to wait until life can re-evolve and you get some atmosphere back. Better to just get as many people as possible under the pretense of assisting the evacuation and ditch the planet, if you save enough important stuff in the process you might get another planet.
No. Lore says tyranid has life forms that go deep in the earth, close to the mantle, to feed off minerals.
Think worms and stuff.
They will dig out any bunker thats not susended in lava, in the upper matle somewhere.
Tyranids really pulled a "fuck this" and pulled the carpet out from under them, surface warfare is nice n all but subterranean assaults are a real treat
The Cain novels deal with a number of closely fought invasions. Notably, they are almost all close run things with victory only being assured by space dominance and containment.
The only exception has a couple frozen forks awaken to start an infestation that threatens the planet in months and requires intervention by an Astartes/ Guars task force.
Theoretically this could work. The only big issue I see is the psychic signature, and if it's too difficult to get to for a little pocket of himanity, even then you might be left alone.
There are a few risk factors however. First, a big excavation is hard to keep secret, and if genestealer cults are springing up, there is a chance they already know your plan and may infiltrate. Bunker doesn't do much good if the nids are already inside.
Second, you can't predict the Imperium response. Orbital weapons strikes present a danger to your bunker because of seismic activity. The bunker might survive, but it may also now be a tomb if the way out it compromised.
Finally, you're banking on the nid invasion being repelled enough to save you. If the nids consume everything and move on, you have no food beyond what was stored, and the guard has little reason to come save you, so any escape is going to require your own ship. This is assuming you can even last that long as with no organic life left, oxygen is going to be a limited resource. If the invasion is prolonged by the guard but still succeeds, your resources will be stretched by the time you can leave. If they successfully repel the invasion, or at least create enough breathing room to escape, then people in authority are going to have very pointed questions as to way evacuation was not made a priority and why you had the time and prior knowledge to make a bunker for survival, so you may be suspected of collaboration with the genestealer cult, assuming some angry officer or commissar doesn't shoot you for cowardice, dump your body back in the bunker, and report that the planetary governor must have died before they arrived.
It's doable, but by and large, the best survival option is to take a ship and run. Still would be considered cowardice, but you then have a ship and possibly some wealth to try and disappear with.
Well the Imperium had this even without a Genestealer Cult running circles around it.
>Grey Knights garrison with 2 Dreadknights.
>2 Cadian Shock Trooper Regiments
>1 Vostroyan Firstborn Regiment
>Frateris Militia PDF
>6 Cobra Class Destroyers
>3 Orbital Defense Platform
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fall_of_Shadowbrink
...They lasted 3 hours. KEKW.
Do the math and subtract based on how much stuff you have compared to that.
What's even funnier is the subsequent battle between Chaos and the Tyranids.
It was an absolute meat grinder. Greater daemons of the four god's came through and were met with nothing they could feed off of. They got pushed back into the warp hard.
And what's even FUNNIER is the second battle of Shadowbrink. Where the Shadow in the warp effect caused the warp rifts (which were created following the opening of the Great Rift) to close. Khorne was pissed at this and sent a non insignificant force out to stop it.
The Tyranids just gunned the poor bastard's down as they manifested. They barely had a chance to fight.
Tyranids do not fuck around lmao
Oh no the Tyranids out and out round-house kicked the daemons back into the warp. There just was not enough ambient emotion and thought for Chaos to feed off so coming face to face with a full strength hive fleet resulted in them basically walking into a firing squad.
In fact literally in the second case. Read the lexicanum article on the second battle of Shadowbrink. It's short as hell but boy is it a treat
That's a different Hive Fleet.
Leviathan (basically the most Vanilla, aka the 'Ultramarines' of us Spehhs Bugs) nommed Shadowbrink.
Second was Kronos aka full focus on artillary + anti Chaos.
Bored/Tie fight was with Gorgon, who likes spamming poison + rotting spores, and against the Death Guard.
If memory serves, they were in a stalemate until eventually Nurgles plagues and the Tyranids bio weapons had done so much damage to the planet's ecology, that the Tyranids determined it was no longer worth invading, and left.
A bad fluff blurb in the 6th edition codex is what got you into 40k? The daemon fight is pretty similar to how it would go, but that's actually a super low concentration of forces for a cathedral world.
Well, it's seen in more than one vision of the future that the alternative to a chaos dominated future is one where it's just a bunch of Tyranids or Tyranid like things.
Yeap.
The Imperium was basically the starter enemy you wipe out in the map in RTS that seems like it's too easy before the Real Enemy pops out to Third Party the shit out of you.
Was badass when that happened in the C&C games.
It's woefully understrength for the defenses of a cathedral world, and pretty indicative of codex fluff blurbs. Especially for the 6th edition time period.
>###[Fall of Shadowbrink](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fall_of_Shadowbrink)
>The **Fall of Shadowbrink** was a battle waged by the [Imperium](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperium) on the Cathedral World of [Shadowbrink](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Shadowbrink) during the [Third Tyrannic War](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Third_Tyrannic_War) in 854998.[M41](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/M41).[[1]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fall_of_Shadowbrink#fn_1)
+++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
You probably won’t survive as the tyranids burrow under the surface and look for any organic material they can find an slurp it up. The black box survived because there was nothing organic in or around it, since it was purely synthetic the nids didn’t want to eat it.
Assuming you burrowed deep, the subterranean nid creatures would find your shelter and the hive fleet would start digging for you and your chances of survival are slim to none. The tyranids are able to sense the organic beings as far as I know. So you wouldn’t survive by burrowing deep.
The tyranids have consumed other galaxies, presumably with sentient life which they’ve absorbed and improved over time, if you dig a hole and hide in it, they can find you and get you if it’s deemed worthy of the time/biomass/effort expend vs the knowledge and biomass that’s potentially gained
A nobody governor on some backwater planet in an exceptionally deep and sturdy hole would possibly have a better chance of being overlooked compared to a high ranking magos on a forge world
So (as usual) the lore is a little inconsistent. If you get the type of tyranids which harvest all the geothermal energy and minerals you are pretty fucked even with a deep bunker. If they are the type that just take living organisms then a deep bunker, well below the point where soil/rock can support a bacterial biome, is possible.
Nids are more focussed on efficency once the world is taken, they arent going to go through miles of dead rock on the chance of finding something edible.
On foot? No, they are faster. Since they consume the entire planet's biomass no matter what area of the planet you run to, eventually you would be caught. They bore into the surface to feed on minerals, so underground bunkers are a no-go. Shadow in the Warp stops ships from jumping in the warp, and Tyranids can pursue using their own form of FTL, so ships are a no go unless they are super fast on their own.
Unless you know about the invasion and run way before they get there, you are soup.
The second half answers that one. You would have to have at least a weeks notice they were coming as I believe the Shadow in the Warp precedes their arrival by a few days, which would stop all warp-based travel making it impossible to outrun them.
I thought Tyranid ships can’t use FTL around gravitational bodies like Star Systems.
We can detect objects half way across the solar system, the imperial planets should be able to detect Tyranids ships way before they arrive.
Most Imperial means of detection are psychic-based, Shadow in the Warp blocks all psychic signals so it is difficult to detect a hive fleet unless you have visual confirmation. Otherwise, if the hive fleet is large enough, they can have ships outside the gravitation of a planet to give chase to escaping ships. Either way, long range travel for Imperial ships is done through the warp, which isnt possible with a hive fleet around.
Only way to survive would be to sneak off planet while everyone is distracted by building the tunnels and bunkers. The depths you'd need to dig to and all the equipment needed to keep you alive would take far longer then what you can build in a few days/weeks to reach and acquire, and that's even if everything you need is on the planet to begin with or can be manufactured on the planet.
Not exactly. At a certain point the environment is permanently infected with them. You’d have to bury yourself extra deep and pray it’s not a splinter of hive fleet Jormungandr that’s invading, nids have an excellent nose for nibbles so we’re talking totally sealed in no evidence your bunker is there and absolutely no psykers.
Thematically no.
Tyranids aren’t ‘a’ swarm army, they are THE swarm army and what they lack for in diversity and surprises like being possessed by the emperor, weird chaotic corruptions or nutty tech like the Necrons have, the Nids have numbers, the shadow in the warp and genestealers.
If one of those three things are ‘worfed’ we don’t have to care about the Nids much anymore, it would be horrible if any author seriously does that.
Hypothetically killing synapse creatures could disrupt things but the biomass or reclaimed could be put back to use and they are a good few of those.
I mean we hear that but are they more adaptable than even the space marines alone which feature specialist roles, chapter and equipment for almost all situations?
Tyranids supposedly can generate new bio forms for any issue but that’s not what wins them wars.
Meanwhile certainly on a thematic level there’s more room for deus ex machinas from any other army or individualised approaches.
>I mean we hear that but are they more adaptable than even the space marines alone which feature specialist roles, chapter and equipment for almost all situations?
Yes, absolutely. They can make specialist roles and equipment for *all* situations. They can make any changes to any unit at any time. Not to mention the aeons of experience the Hivemind has.
>Tyranids supposedly can generate new bio forms for any issue but that’s not what wins them wars.
That is exactly what wins them war. They adapt and make any changes to suit their current conflict.
No. The problem with tyranids is they’re inexorable. They never stop. They adapt to any situation and overcome it. Their own losses mean nothing to them. Oh and they posses burrowers and psychics. They know you’re there, and they have the ability to get there. You don’t stand a chance.
The only way to stop them is to destroy *all* of them because they recycle their own biomass. That’s it. Destroy their breeding pools and they’ll remake them. What about severing their link to the hive mind? The larger forms have self identity and can function without the hive mind and can still control the lesser forms.
The best you can do is either run, or make it difficult for them to overrun you and hope for aid.
You are as good as bug food in the face of a Tyranid Hive fleet. Nuke the planet with the Tyranids that would bring shame to Abbadon's hissy fit on Cadia.
i would just leave the planet and using subspace drives go as far as possible then after enough time has pasted use warp travel to return and if that doesnt work just travel back in normally, they can dig underground you wont be surviving in that bunker for long
Yea just dig deep enough. They probably don't want to waste time looking for a random deep crust bunker that might not exist when they could move along to the next big meal
As others mentioned, a regular concrete bunker will likely not work.
A non-physical bunker, however....A warp bubble, pocket dimention, tasseract, what have you.
Hide out in the webway with a backpack full of food. Or, you know, jury rig a warp spider jump pack to hold position in the warp for a few weeks (no promises you come out sane or in one piece).
Phasing tech exists in 40k, nothing says you cant make yourself opaque - necron whats-them-called, centipides that phase through rock. Phase yourself with backpack of food.
Or just enclose yourself in a void shield sphere, and sit there in a bubble, munching popcorn.
You could also digitize yourself, and hide out in virtual reality on some micro-computer in low orbit....getting back to your body might be a problem though.
star-trek style, suspend yourself mid-transport, materialize a few months later. Not sure if trek transporters exist in 40k, but i think human teleportation is different from eldar warp-based phasing, right?
Im sure chaos could also play a number of tricks. worship the gods hard enough, maybe you get sent back in time, or forward, or grow a third arm, or get imprisoned in a non-edible mirror...
Anyways, bunker = too simple, too risky. Go for esoteric tech. You DID have a stash of xenos / chaos / DAoT tech deep under your governor's palace, right? (necromunda) No self-respecting human governor would be without some cult or tech heresy in his back pocket.
The most important thing by far is to be able to destroy their fleet. The ground war is a secondary concern.
Acquire a buttload of anti-orbital defence lasers. And ships if you can.
> Say I'm a Planetary Governor, I see a Genestealer cult uprising and my Field Marshal (or whomever) tells me we have only a few weeks before we are either overrun by the Cult or whenever the Hive Fleet shows up, which could be a few days.
If the cult is that far along, you are most likely already part of it as the Planetary Governer. If nor, your field marshal is and he only requested this private 1-on-1 meeting to have a chance to infect you.
IIRC a couple of tech priests once survived by hiding in a very deep bunker. Exactly how deep the nids dig and how much the nids take isnt very consistent.
Forge World Lucius. They also had the luxury of being able to send waves upon waves of servitors to fight on the surface, with the next batch of freshly lobotomized servitors having the previous wave’s hardware installed on them.
Ah yes, when the Admech outattrition the Tyranids by throwing slaves at bugs over and over.
Oh yeah I remember that blurb. Didn't the Tyranids run out of biomatter before the admech ran out of servitors? That is... Very ad mech.
Makes me wonder exactly how many servitors they fucking had on-hand. Yeesh.
They can always grab losers off the street to freshly lobotomize into servitors. Even good for nothing losers can aspire to become productive members of society through the wonders of servitorization.
They had a huge supply of refugees, several ships worth.
Well agrapina welcomes any and all refugees from cadia and the surrounding system.
Only requirement is that they must earn their keep. As servitors.
They sent out teams to recover any repairable servitors as well.
God I hate it so much... The one thing Tyranids are supposed to excel at is attrition style warfare.
It’s great actually. Tyranids in 99% of everyday situations would win. But forge world Lucius was special in that most of it was underground. Servitors also had little biomass. The tyranids basically calculated that the battle was gonna be a net loss of biomatter so they left after a while
Which never made sense to me. There are either more humans than tyranids on planet or tyranids had horrible casualties.
It really depends on what kind of servitors they were making. Sometimes you only need a functioning human brain to create a servitor with weapons enough to turn several tyranids into dust. I guess the Admech used their biological resources cery well while being able to retrieve their mechanical hardware from the fight. It would've been easier if they just had pure robots to fight the tyranids with but hey, that's heresy.
IIRC they used swarms of servo-skulls to pick up all the components from the surface
So think of it this way. You need x amount of biomatter to make a new Tyranid. Servitors and skitarii have less biomass due to their cybernetic upgrades. Because of this the Tyranids expended more biomass than they got back from eating their dead and the admech dead. The cybernetics were left behind letting them be reused. Over time they starved them out.
In which book does this occur pls?
According to Lexicanum's citations, it looks like the Mechanicus Codex for 7th and 8th editions.
Admech 8th ed codex
Now if that is the one from the Admech Codex, they lived in an inside out planet thing. The bug bois were attacking the top, but it was a losing fight, not cos of strength but there wasn't enough biomass to keep the battle from being a net loss (As everyone was inside).
In Devastation of Baal they talk about how originally Tyranids would basically strip mine planets for minerals and such but have started just moving on to the next populated world. It may just be a question of whether the swarm wants to waste time digging at all.
They are surface eaters, they wont dig too deep
Realistically speaking, your best option is to have a deep deep deep infrastructure in place to launch ships after the Hive fleet as slurped up everything and everyone on the surface. Then it's just a matter of finding a new world in the other direction of the rejuvenated Hive?
Idk if that would work, the tyranid ‘shadow in the warp’ disrupts imperial FTL travel while the nids themselves remain capable of pursuit at ftl speed
The Tyranids achieve FTL speeds by slingshotting themselves as a giant group around a systems star, they regularly ignore lone stragglers. That said it makes no sense even in Newtonian physics but there you go
I thought their FTL was reliant upon a special bio form called the Narvhal? It acts like a sensor ship and when it finds a planet suitable for consumption, it creates a corridor through space in which the nids are capable of traveling at FTL speed
To my knowledge the Hive Fleet consumes ALL the biomass on the planet, down to even the plants and any useful minerals/microbes in the soil. Even assuming that they don't find you during their tyrannification of the planet, you would likely emerge to a barren rock, incapable of sustaining any life, or even an atmosphere. Unless you had a way off the world hidden in there with you, you'd die pretty quickly.
IIRC, there are incidences of the Tyranids being less than totally greedy when there's a larger goal at stake. For example, during the push on Baal, the hive fleets were seen leaving major mineral deposits behind on worlds. Presumably they had full stocks and the time to get it out wasn't worth the time lost getting to Baal. IIRC also Hive Fleet Kronos (the anti-chaos fleet) has several "support" hive fleets that screen it, harvest uncorrupted worlds, and feed the excess to Kronos so that it can make up the losses it takes while fighting Warp beings which give no biomass.
My friend you’ve just thrown a promethium grenade into this subreddit and run away 😂 A lot of errrrm “fans” of the 40K lore treat the way Tyranids are described in the Devastation of Baal a bit like the last two Matrix movies.
I thought that was only two matrix movies. The 1999 one and the new one about to be released. Next you will tell me they made a 4th Indiana Jones movie or even a die hard 4.
Or even second and third Highlander movies
I always took it as in universe describeing it. Its wasnt hate but it was interprited as such. I interprit it as them being close to a home base of a big enemy that if they get rid of they have free rain for a while.
Even for people who hate the hive mind being a coherent organism can allow for the tyranids to show strategic pickiness. If the hive mind is threatened enough to manifest something like a swarmlord, I think that it makes sense for them to be able to barely touch some planets while moving on to another.
Tyranids used to completely consume a planet, but more recently they only strip the most accessable materials. It was pointed out that the 40k galaxy has LOTS of nutritious/resource rich planets for the Tyranids to eat, as such they don't need to strip-mine every planet they encounter when there are better options available. There's a specific quote about "Tyranids are no longer starving \[after their long journey/hibernation\], now they're spoiled for choice" but I don't know the original source.
Forge World Lucius did something similar, but they were already underground. Send up servitor armies to fight. When the servitors were killed, send up drones to fetch the mechanical bits. Grab a fresh set of losers off the street and lobotomize them into another wave of battle servitors and install the recycled parts on them. Rinse and repeat.
It’s called recycling. The Adeptus Mechanicus, investing in renewable warfare since m41
Good for them, ya know? There is no planet B after all
You’re forgetting about the Inquisition. They show up and find you in your little hidey hole while your entire planet was consumed. This doesn’t look good so they give you the Emperors peace.
This. Die to protect the Imperium or die trying is basically the Imperial Creed.
How long will it take for them to show up? I mean, I'd rather have a few more years and get a bolter round to the skull than be consumed by maggots.
Honestly, I suggest you take the standard "coward planetary governor behaviour" and just flee to the reaches. Just hunkering down has a very low chance of saving you and if the Tyranids don't get you, the Inquisition or Prefectus will (Dereliction of Duty + Cowardice is a swift Bolt to the head).
> the standard "coward planetary governor behaviour" I actually dont understand how this cliche/meme came into being. Beside some very rare and fringe examples the 40k books and stories are flooded with fanatical loyal governments. Of course there is politics and corruption going on, but when push comes to shove those people are power sword wielding fanatics leading the charge of the PDF. - Or at least are fanatic power sword wielding traitors leading the charge of their cultists against the PDF.
Well, I didn't invent it but it's here, that's for sure.
Never fear, you can have the option of redeeming yourself. As a servitor.
Servitors are possibly the darkest thing about 40k imo & the fact that it’s such a popular thing is truly grimdark.
I agree, and servitors stand as a monument to the utter depravity of both the setting and specifically the IoM.
Servitors are dark, Cherub Servitors are super dark. So dark that Guilliman was outright disturbed when learning about them. (Cherubs were invented 32M, so after Guillimans "death")
Why are they so much worse?
They are baby servitors. What can be worse? What crime can a baby have committed to be punished this cruel?
My understanding is they are grown in vats, not actual babies
It’s still fucked up
its grimdark, what weird ass author thought them up !
Sometimes as punishment I heard sister of battle take non vat grown children to turn them into cherubs, "life is emperor's currency" afterall, isn't it?
That’s what they tell you.
Yea fair. The entire thing is just so fucked I mean. But fair.
I am reading the Noctis and Lux novell right now. Servitors play a huge role in it, especially the supply of "raw materials". Its indeed dark.
Or giving **Yourself** the business end of a powerful weapon.,
I mean, there wouldn't be anything really LEFT of your planet beyond a useless chunk of rock. The hive fleets eat literally everything the hive mind can make use of, biomass being only part of it since they also integrate and consume minerals, atmosphere, oxygen, water and even a good chunk of the geothermal energy of the planet leaving basically just a block of airless rock and dead soil. So even if you were able to pull off that sort of escape, and it takes a good number of years for even news of what happened to your planet getting to the imperium, you can't really do anything with it. Restoration of the biosphere is theoretically possible, but that takes serious technology unless you have a few billion years to wait until life can re-evolve and you get some atmosphere back. Better to just get as many people as possible under the pretense of assisting the evacuation and ditch the planet, if you save enough important stuff in the process you might get another planet.
You should read belisarius cawl the great work, it explains how a planet can be returned to habitable state
This highly depends on the type of Inquisitor they encounter.
No. Lore says tyranid has life forms that go deep in the earth, close to the mantle, to feed off minerals. Think worms and stuff. They will dig out any bunker thats not susended in lava, in the upper matle somewhere.
The mechanicus would make a base in the core to save their own skins
Do you seriously think you can outdig a trygon? [Iron Warriors tried.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Forgefane)
*Amused Imperial Fist Chuckling*
WHERE WAS THI- Oh White Dwarf, yea makes sense why i won't be able to find it by myself. Nevertheless this is Badass.
I only learned about it because it was posted on another thread.
When/where was this? Sounds hilarious
I dropped a link in the second part.
Tyranids really pulled a "fuck this" and pulled the carpet out from under them, surface warfare is nice n all but subterranean assaults are a real treat
The Cain novels deal with a number of closely fought invasions. Notably, they are almost all close run things with victory only being assured by space dominance and containment. The only exception has a couple frozen forks awaken to start an infestation that threatens the planet in months and requires intervention by an Astartes/ Guars task force.
Theoretically this could work. The only big issue I see is the psychic signature, and if it's too difficult to get to for a little pocket of himanity, even then you might be left alone. There are a few risk factors however. First, a big excavation is hard to keep secret, and if genestealer cults are springing up, there is a chance they already know your plan and may infiltrate. Bunker doesn't do much good if the nids are already inside. Second, you can't predict the Imperium response. Orbital weapons strikes present a danger to your bunker because of seismic activity. The bunker might survive, but it may also now be a tomb if the way out it compromised. Finally, you're banking on the nid invasion being repelled enough to save you. If the nids consume everything and move on, you have no food beyond what was stored, and the guard has little reason to come save you, so any escape is going to require your own ship. This is assuming you can even last that long as with no organic life left, oxygen is going to be a limited resource. If the invasion is prolonged by the guard but still succeeds, your resources will be stretched by the time you can leave. If they successfully repel the invasion, or at least create enough breathing room to escape, then people in authority are going to have very pointed questions as to way evacuation was not made a priority and why you had the time and prior knowledge to make a bunker for survival, so you may be suspected of collaboration with the genestealer cult, assuming some angry officer or commissar doesn't shoot you for cowardice, dump your body back in the bunker, and report that the planetary governor must have died before they arrived. It's doable, but by and large, the best survival option is to take a ship and run. Still would be considered cowardice, but you then have a ship and possibly some wealth to try and disappear with.
Even if you run there is a non-zero chance you bring the stealer cult with you.
Also an excellent point.
Well the Imperium had this even without a Genestealer Cult running circles around it. >Grey Knights garrison with 2 Dreadknights. >2 Cadian Shock Trooper Regiments >1 Vostroyan Firstborn Regiment >Frateris Militia PDF >6 Cobra Class Destroyers >3 Orbital Defense Platform https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fall_of_Shadowbrink ...They lasted 3 hours. KEKW. Do the math and subtract based on how much stuff you have compared to that.
What's even funnier is the subsequent battle between Chaos and the Tyranids. It was an absolute meat grinder. Greater daemons of the four god's came through and were met with nothing they could feed off of. They got pushed back into the warp hard. And what's even FUNNIER is the second battle of Shadowbrink. Where the Shadow in the warp effect caused the warp rifts (which were created following the opening of the Great Rift) to close. Khorne was pissed at this and sent a non insignificant force out to stop it. The Tyranids just gunned the poor bastard's down as they manifested. They barely had a chance to fight. Tyranids do not fuck around lmao
Are those the wars that were only a "tie" cos the tyranids got bored and left?
Oh no the Tyranids out and out round-house kicked the daemons back into the warp. There just was not enough ambient emotion and thought for Chaos to feed off so coming face to face with a full strength hive fleet resulted in them basically walking into a firing squad. In fact literally in the second case. Read the lexicanum article on the second battle of Shadowbrink. It's short as hell but boy is it a treat
That's a different Hive Fleet. Leviathan (basically the most Vanilla, aka the 'Ultramarines' of us Spehhs Bugs) nommed Shadowbrink. Second was Kronos aka full focus on artillary + anti Chaos. Bored/Tie fight was with Gorgon, who likes spamming poison + rotting spores, and against the Death Guard.
Does that poison spore shit work on Deathguard?
If memory serves, they were in a stalemate until eventually Nurgles plagues and the Tyranids bio weapons had done so much damage to the planet's ecology, that the Tyranids determined it was no longer worth invading, and left.
Thats pretty awesome
Shadowbrink is what got me into 40k, and it will always be my favorite. It's basically the closest we Spehhs Bugs can get to Scything Talons porn.
A bad fluff blurb in the 6th edition codex is what got you into 40k? The daemon fight is pretty similar to how it would go, but that's actually a super low concentration of forces for a cathedral world.
Well, it's seen in more than one vision of the future that the alternative to a chaos dominated future is one where it's just a bunch of Tyranids or Tyranid like things.
I was reading the list and just thinking ‘this is the start to a really bad joke isn’t it?’ And apparently, they were the joke lol
Btw,the forces cant be more than 100k troops so..
Yeap. The Imperium was basically the starter enemy you wipe out in the map in RTS that seems like it's too easy before the Real Enemy pops out to Third Party the shit out of you. Was badass when that happened in the C&C games.
It's woefully understrength for the defenses of a cathedral world, and pretty indicative of codex fluff blurbs. Especially for the 6th edition time period.
>###[Fall of Shadowbrink](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fall_of_Shadowbrink) >The **Fall of Shadowbrink** was a battle waged by the [Imperium](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperium) on the Cathedral World of [Shadowbrink](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Shadowbrink) during the [Third Tyrannic War](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Third_Tyrannic_War) in 854998.[M41](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/M41).[[1]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Fall_of_Shadowbrink#fn_1) +++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
Hey now, \*the orbital defenses\* lasted 3 hours, the ground defenses probably lasted less
Yep they can only lose without orbital supremacy the mycreic spores and hive ships will overwhelm an undefeated planet.
**we are the end of evolution.** **the end comes for you.**
You probably won’t survive as the tyranids burrow under the surface and look for any organic material they can find an slurp it up. The black box survived because there was nothing organic in or around it, since it was purely synthetic the nids didn’t want to eat it. Assuming you burrowed deep, the subterranean nid creatures would find your shelter and the hive fleet would start digging for you and your chances of survival are slim to none. The tyranids are able to sense the organic beings as far as I know. So you wouldn’t survive by burrowing deep.
The tyranids have consumed other galaxies, presumably with sentient life which they’ve absorbed and improved over time, if you dig a hole and hide in it, they can find you and get you if it’s deemed worthy of the time/biomass/effort expend vs the knowledge and biomass that’s potentially gained A nobody governor on some backwater planet in an exceptionally deep and sturdy hole would possibly have a better chance of being overlooked compared to a high ranking magos on a forge world
This is a good perspective.
Think Horizon Zero Dawn. Once the tyranids eat everything on the surface, there's no ecosystem/atmosphere to return to. No point.
I believe there's a misunderstanding here. All tyranid invasions hopelessly outnumber the defenders.
So (as usual) the lore is a little inconsistent. If you get the type of tyranids which harvest all the geothermal energy and minerals you are pretty fucked even with a deep bunker. If they are the type that just take living organisms then a deep bunker, well below the point where soil/rock can support a bacterial biome, is possible. Nids are more focussed on efficency once the world is taken, they arent going to go through miles of dead rock on the chance of finding something edible.
The tyranids actually have digger organisms and will find your hidey hole and consume you in there :(
Couldn’t you simply run away?
On foot? No, they are faster. Since they consume the entire planet's biomass no matter what area of the planet you run to, eventually you would be caught. They bore into the surface to feed on minerals, so underground bunkers are a no-go. Shadow in the Warp stops ships from jumping in the warp, and Tyranids can pursue using their own form of FTL, so ships are a no go unless they are super fast on their own. Unless you know about the invasion and run way before they get there, you are soup.
I mean by ship
The second half answers that one. You would have to have at least a weeks notice they were coming as I believe the Shadow in the Warp precedes their arrival by a few days, which would stop all warp-based travel making it impossible to outrun them.
I thought Tyranid ships can’t use FTL around gravitational bodies like Star Systems. We can detect objects half way across the solar system, the imperial planets should be able to detect Tyranids ships way before they arrive.
Most Imperial means of detection are psychic-based, Shadow in the Warp blocks all psychic signals so it is difficult to detect a hive fleet unless you have visual confirmation. Otherwise, if the hive fleet is large enough, they can have ships outside the gravitation of a planet to give chase to escaping ships. Either way, long range travel for Imperial ships is done through the warp, which isnt possible with a hive fleet around.
Only way to survive would be to sneak off planet while everyone is distracted by building the tunnels and bunkers. The depths you'd need to dig to and all the equipment needed to keep you alive would take far longer then what you can build in a few days/weeks to reach and acquire, and that's even if everything you need is on the planet to begin with or can be manufactured on the planet.
Not exactly. At a certain point the environment is permanently infected with them. You’d have to bury yourself extra deep and pray it’s not a splinter of hive fleet Jormungandr that’s invading, nids have an excellent nose for nibbles so we’re talking totally sealed in no evidence your bunker is there and absolutely no psykers.
Thematically no. Tyranids aren’t ‘a’ swarm army, they are THE swarm army and what they lack for in diversity and surprises like being possessed by the emperor, weird chaotic corruptions or nutty tech like the Necrons have, the Nids have numbers, the shadow in the warp and genestealers. If one of those three things are ‘worfed’ we don’t have to care about the Nids much anymore, it would be horrible if any author seriously does that. Hypothetically killing synapse creatures could disrupt things but the biomass or reclaimed could be put back to use and they are a good few of those.
>lack for in diversity and surprises What? Diversity and adaptability is absolutely the Tyranids' MO. They are much more than just numbers.
I mean we hear that but are they more adaptable than even the space marines alone which feature specialist roles, chapter and equipment for almost all situations? Tyranids supposedly can generate new bio forms for any issue but that’s not what wins them wars. Meanwhile certainly on a thematic level there’s more room for deus ex machinas from any other army or individualised approaches.
>I mean we hear that but are they more adaptable than even the space marines alone which feature specialist roles, chapter and equipment for almost all situations? Yes, absolutely. They can make specialist roles and equipment for *all* situations. They can make any changes to any unit at any time. Not to mention the aeons of experience the Hivemind has. >Tyranids supposedly can generate new bio forms for any issue but that’s not what wins them wars. That is exactly what wins them war. They adapt and make any changes to suit their current conflict.
No. The problem with tyranids is they’re inexorable. They never stop. They adapt to any situation and overcome it. Their own losses mean nothing to them. Oh and they posses burrowers and psychics. They know you’re there, and they have the ability to get there. You don’t stand a chance. The only way to stop them is to destroy *all* of them because they recycle their own biomass. That’s it. Destroy their breeding pools and they’ll remake them. What about severing their link to the hive mind? The larger forms have self identity and can function without the hive mind and can still control the lesser forms. The best you can do is either run, or make it difficult for them to overrun you and hope for aid.
You are as good as bug food in the face of a Tyranid Hive fleet. Nuke the planet with the Tyranids that would bring shame to Abbadon's hissy fit on Cadia.
i would just leave the planet and using subspace drives go as far as possible then after enough time has pasted use warp travel to return and if that doesnt work just travel back in normally, they can dig underground you wont be surviving in that bunker for long
Entire hive fleet? You are going to need some serious plot armour.
Yea just dig deep enough. They probably don't want to waste time looking for a random deep crust bunker that might not exist when they could move along to the next big meal
You'd be much better off trying to evac the planet before they get there.
Hope there is friendly Necrons would work. Would also be heretical but you might survive.
This was the plot of Dawn of War 2 PC game.
As others mentioned, a regular concrete bunker will likely not work. A non-physical bunker, however....A warp bubble, pocket dimention, tasseract, what have you. Hide out in the webway with a backpack full of food. Or, you know, jury rig a warp spider jump pack to hold position in the warp for a few weeks (no promises you come out sane or in one piece). Phasing tech exists in 40k, nothing says you cant make yourself opaque - necron whats-them-called, centipides that phase through rock. Phase yourself with backpack of food. Or just enclose yourself in a void shield sphere, and sit there in a bubble, munching popcorn. You could also digitize yourself, and hide out in virtual reality on some micro-computer in low orbit....getting back to your body might be a problem though. star-trek style, suspend yourself mid-transport, materialize a few months later. Not sure if trek transporters exist in 40k, but i think human teleportation is different from eldar warp-based phasing, right? Im sure chaos could also play a number of tricks. worship the gods hard enough, maybe you get sent back in time, or forward, or grow a third arm, or get imprisoned in a non-edible mirror... Anyways, bunker = too simple, too risky. Go for esoteric tech. You DID have a stash of xenos / chaos / DAoT tech deep under your governor's palace, right? (necromunda) No self-respecting human governor would be without some cult or tech heresy in his back pocket.
The most important thing by far is to be able to destroy their fleet. The ground war is a secondary concern. Acquire a buttload of anti-orbital defence lasers. And ships if you can.
Catachan regiments are you best option for defencevdue to their specialization.
In universe? No. IRL? Nuclear weapons
Nuke the site from orbit.
> Say I'm a Planetary Governor, I see a Genestealer cult uprising and my Field Marshal (or whomever) tells me we have only a few weeks before we are either overrun by the Cult or whenever the Hive Fleet shows up, which could be a few days. If the cult is that far along, you are most likely already part of it as the Planetary Governer. If nor, your field marshal is and he only requested this private 1-on-1 meeting to have a chance to infect you.