The 40k Lorecast - Episode 37 - Tyranids pt 1 - What they are and where they come from

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

On today's episode we begin our deep dive into the Tyranids. We start of with where they came from, how that story has changed. After that we focus a bit on the mystery that is the Tyranid's purpose in the galaxy. With some focus on what is believed has brought them to the galaxy and where they appear to be going in it. We then finish with a coverage of some of our favorite fan theories on the Tyranid's true origins and purposes.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we're going to dive into the greatest threat to the galaxy. Have we said that before? Yep. It's kind of a theme in 40K writing. Everything is the greatest threat to the galaxy.

I say, Abidon and the Silent King are both going, what the hell, bro? Yeah, hey, we were just there. Tao have not been. Sorry, I don't hate Tao. It's just fun at this point. But before we begin, I'm going to check you guys electricity, because we have some plugs. Indeed, we do.

Right. So first off, obviously, like and subscribe to the cast if you haven't already. Number two, we do have a very, very good Discord. That's something we're at this,

at time of writing, we're close to 400 members. It's quite active. A lot of discussions about lore, gameplay, modeling, memes, etc. Join.

We make no money off it, by the way. I just think it's a great way for people who like this cast to come in and interact and be able to kind of ask questions. We are both very active in there.

So if you listen to the cast and you say, hey, what were you referencing? I'll usually get back to you within a couple hours. It's on my phone. So if you're looking for a place interact, come hang out with us there. Also, if you want to support us, we do have a Patreon. The links in the show notes. We need new equipment. It'd be cool if we had some help.

It would help us get new equipment, like microphones that can pick up when I lean away from the microphone. Because guess who has no experience working in radio? Hey, you guess who gets yelled at a lot for? The thing that I do for a living. Also, if you like to get coaching. The other one is Brad. So Brad actually does coaching for 40K. And we say coaching, we don't mean like, you know, oh, I'm in there running for a top

10 seating in ITC and I want to get a little bit better. Brad can actually just teach you the basics of the game, too. He's been doing this for a while. You can reach him at old man Brad 40K at gmail.com. Or you can just go to the 40K lorecast.com. And click the link. Click on Brad. There's a link there.

So you guys have to write down what he just said. There's a link there. You guys can get over from there. And I'll come to do things, too. If you're, especially, I talked to this with people putting on events and conventions and stuff like that. I love to do in-person classes and stuff like that. So if you have anything like that, you're looking, I've been doing stuff with the

armed forces and all kinds of other things. So I'm willing to go places and do things. I like to talk and I like to have people listen to me. That's very true. We both have that. That's why we made this cast. All right, so on to today's casts. So today is going to be the first of three casts on the Tyrannids.

This is because the Tyrannids are one of the first Zenos added in the game. So their lore is long and extremely intertwined into 40s. It's also everywhere. Yeah. Well, now. Well, I'm just saying it. That's like as of like a year and a half ago. No, I'm saying, but it's been.

I'm not even talking about it. The lore itself has been, it's probably the most retort. because of the fact that they kept adding and adding and adding to. Squats. Well, they might not even exist, okay? I mean, obvious, when we write the show notes, I originally realized show notes, they are the most retcon to Army. And then I went, and I went and pulled old codexes.

And I was like, oh, no, it's the squats. I think I meant to say space dwarves. Space dwarves. Anyway. I'll keep that box forever. So today's cast, though, we're going to focus on the background of the Tirens, what we know of it, kind of how they function, what bottom of the galaxy, where they appear to be going to the galaxy

and some theories on their end goals. This is all theories, both Brad and my theories, but also, remember, the game of 40K is written from most of the perspective of the Imperium. There are some, if you realize, I think the fifth edition codex of Tyrannids, there are some codex that are written from the perspective of the Tyrannids,

but then they... Very, very few and far between. Yeah, but then those went away pretty quickly. So it's kind of a cool thing with the Tyrannids that we are passengers on the journey of, like, people are learning, oh, this is what we think they're up to. So they're not only this massive threat

and almost infinite size. Alien goals, you have no idea what they want. We have no idea what they want. It's definitely not to win a baking championship. Well, also, are we going to have to talk about the fact that there was a negotiation at one point in time? They got retcon out of existence. I would rather not discuss the Zotes,

but we're going to actually very quickly. So let's just jump right into that. So as far as the GW getting retcon, here are some things that we're going to touch on very briefly in this cast because they were stupid. One, Zotes. We'll talk about them in a minute. They're done. Two, they actually allied with other factions at one point in the game. Yes.

People made alliances with the tyrannids. And this is something that has completely been, that didn't get reccom. That got hit with a hammer. It'd be fair. When GW, usually when GW retcons things, they just don't talk about it ever again. and hope you forgot they wrote it. This one seems to have actually been written out of the game. Yeah, they just said no.

Anything, everything outside of, hey, send your codex is back to us so we can cross some stuff out of it. Yeah, this is a big deal because originally the Ternans were being allied with, but just they were negotiating with. Yeah, the Zotes were literally negotiating with mankind. Which this is why it bothers me. You know, screw this. I'm going on a Brad Tanchure.

Because, yeah, because this made no sense to me. and it never made sense. And I think that the GW writers afterwards didn't think it made sense. I don't know how this got through because what happened is the gene, the, well, Gene Steelers were original. Yeah.

But the Zotes. The Zotes have no place in all of the lore for the past 30-some years. Well, the Zotes, okay, so the key thing of this, what they've done with it is that they've kind of messed with some timelines. The Zotes technically ceased existing before the first,

before Tyran. Yeah. And so it's a weird, that I just made some references if you don't know Tyrannins. This will all make sense next couple episodes. But these guys make no sense to me at all because of the fact that the big draw for Tiernans is that they're this unknown force. That's monstrous. They have, but you have no idea where it's from. Is there more?

Is this the biggest threat? Exactly. It's always been the, is this the end of the threat? Correct. Right. Well, that's the biggest thing is. Also, is this a scout force? Yeah.

You know, this thing that we're having a hard time dealing with it at all, is this a scout? It just ate a chunk of the galaxy. And it's also this unknowable. Are these directed by, because we found out about different hive minds? Yeah. Is there an overpowering one? Is there multiples? What are we even dealing with?

And the answer is, you don't know. And that's one of the things that GW wants. That's why the Zotes made no sense to me. Yeah. And beyond this, though, it's also. We also have the definition of first contact that moved a bitch. But I just want to do, I will defend GW a couple of things with Tyrannids. One, I actually think they're one of the best written races in the game.

Agreed. When we talk about orcs, we talk about, I mean, Brian, I both love orcs. The thing is weird about orcs is, orcs on paper are the most terrifying force in the galaxy, but they wrote them to be funny. Tyrannids, they kept the funny out. They left the funny at home. They're just terrible. They made this a true invasion force. They also doubled down when they went to GSC who are even more terrible.

They made, the tyrannids are objectively a horrifying threat to the galaxy. Like, because they're mostly because they don't carry, and we'll get this in a second, it's not malice they're acting with. They're just following. And that's why those being obsessed. Because one of the biggest fear, why they're so scary is that you can't negotiate with them. There's nothing to negotiate.

Yeah, they just show up and you die. Right. There's no, can we get a ceasefire? Can we get it? No, there's nothing. And that's why it's so terrifying because it's just this force that is coming at you and you can't do anything about it. It's only aggression, period. So the disclaimer we'll make for this is you're going to hear stuff where some of this stuff has been retcon, depending on what you're reading.

We're trying to cover everything here to give you guys a better example. We're not just trying to do a lore as of what is we're recording this in June of 2024. We don't want to kind of just give you the lore that is today. We want to give you a bit of the journey because Brad and I are both there for the journey. I mean, Tyrnids are a weird one because this is an army I was playing before Brad played the game. Interesting. Because I was playing in the early 90s,

and I stopped for almost 20 years, but kept breathing the Lord. So Tyrannins, I've known forever. But just for people who are saying, when Tyrannids came to the game, they were only eight playable races. Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines, which at this part of the game

were the same army, just paying them differently. You had guard, which were really minimal. You did have squats at this point. Space drives. They went away. Eldar, no Drucari, just straight up Eldar, orcs. You had demons came in right about this time as Tyrannids.

I guess Gene Steelers and Gene Stilers, they, these Gene Tilly cult existed. And demons were kind of their own weird thing. They were very different. Yeah, because they were also basically an offshoot of chaos. Remember, you would summon them. Exactly. And I think I was, I was pulling codexes. So I do, I luckily had every codex ever made do a, did I.

purchase all of them, obviously. Yeah. PDF would definitely be the format many of these things are in. But anyway, when you go back, but I do, it's how do research for this cast, I go back through and read the old ones. But that kind of gives idea. Territes were actually one of the first fully fleshed out xenos species after Eldar and ork. It's somewhere in that world.

And one of the lures of them is really they played differently, but they also had a different lore. Again, they were this alien intelligence. and they use that term quite a bit. I will admit, though, some of their early models look so bad. Yes, but all the original models look terrible. Yeah, but it was just more the size, the size scale. They're so tiny.

It was funny to be like, this is a term of God. Cool, what's that? That's a Carnifax. It's like 8% bigger. Yep. It's terrifying. Yeah, it'll throw up building at you. You're like, yeah, look at how cute he is.

He's like, he's pretty adorable. But the alien intelligent thing, and I'm going to use that term quite a bit, because GW used that a lot in the beginning. Because one of the things that makes Tarynids so threatening is not just the no negation and everything. You just don't know what you're even dealing with. And the Imperium had such a hard time because the Ternids, one of the biggest things they are is adaptive. Yeah, well, I mean, let's get into that in a bit. Because I want to start with just kind of wear there.

So Tyrannids are the only piece of the entire 40K that are not native to the Milky Way. I mean, they might be a fitz-old once. Chaos. I'm at that second. Chaos, but at least, sorry, they're coming from outside the Milky Way. Because even the way they write the warp, the warps appears to be somewhat native to the, or at least. I think that we said this in one of the last cast. I really think that the warp still has a geography.

Yeah. It would just make sense. Either it makes, I'm not saying it makes sense from like a physics standpoint, just from if you're doing game design. It's the upside down. Well, it's also if you're doing game design, you kind of have to do it this way. You can't be like, oh, also the warps pulling from. If you watch, I really think that if you watch Stranger Things, it's similar to that is it's the flip side of the material universe. Now, one thing I'm going to get into here, because I'm going to, I'm going to bitch about it now.

The tyrannid invasion is coming from the eastern fringe of the galaxy. Three dimensions don't exist, John. There's also no north and south. There's no polarity in a universe. Just because they're coming in from the right side. It would be just as accurate as seeing the eastern fringe. I mean, you're not even bothering with the 3D. You're just upset about the northeast.

That was another very fun one, by the way. In my head, I'm like, they can't be this wrong because I looked it up. And now they are, I will defend them a little bit. The galaxy is somewhat flat-plained. At least we thought so until about 20 years ago, we discovered, no, it's actually incredibly diverse. And the distance between the highest, in a 3D, if you look at 3D realm, the highest, the lowest,

it's like 10,000 light years. So whatever. It's a big deal. It's massive. But anyway. If you were looking at a 3D model, the Terranids are coming from the bottom right, basically. Yeah.

Although not anymore. That's what we get to that. That is true. Not now. But the Terids originally came in on the eastern side, although we're not actually entirely sure about where the first contact came from, because as with imperial history, it's matter what's been recorded.

Also, the Ternids destroy, let me back this up real quick. We're going to cover this a little bit more later, but one of the biggest things I thought was terrifying and one of the basic things about the Ternans is, the Ternanids have an overwhelming psychic presence. Yep. They cut off originally,

it's a little bit different in Lournau, but originally, when Tiran showed up, they effectively jammed your comms. Only they still do. I mean, in modern lore, it still does. Like, it just goes black. Right. Because you can't contact anyone to tell you that an invasion is happening.

So how many planets, how many systems did the Tyrinans destroy before we knew that they were there? Who knows? Making it worse is that, again, we'll cover this later. When the Tarynans move through a system, they leave behind a barren rock. They don't conquer. So if you've never been to that part of the galaxy, you would get to the part of the galaxy and say, oh, wow, everything here is dead. It's also, how would you know? It's another barren rock of a planet, which is the majority of the planets.

All right, but let's go with what the tyrannids are. The phrase I wrote is there an evolving biomass of violence and consumption with a centralized intelligence. Could be singular. Could you be centralized. This is what we don't know. You know what? I can't be bound on this, John. Go for it.

Adaptive. Evolving is the biggest thing and why they're so fearsome. If you showed up with tanks, they show up with genetically engineered, grown creatures that now kill tanks. You brought a bunch of infantry. Well, the next battle they're going to have guys, and it's that fast. Oh, yeah, we forgot to do our normal caveat of if you play Tyrannids and you like Tyrannins and listen to this cast, you're going to be horrifyingly disappointed by how they play the table top because they're nowhere near as cool. And that's what big thing we're going to go to later on is the different high fleets in no one gets sold.

They can't say that. I got to reel that way back because there's so many armies that don't have what they have in lore. Tiernids are one amongst our weapon. is in turn it says, man, this army does not get its due justice from the lore to the tabletop as far as the differences in the fleets, how easily they adapt. And that's such a big thing. I would just say numbers. I mean, I don't think anyone wants to actually own a thousand gaunts to put them on the table. But that's what it's what the shots are different every fight. I know, but I thought basically is volume. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so we don't know

kind of halit here and it's formed, but we just know what they are. Or where? Yeah, or where. The key, then one of the most important points about them, though, is synaptic control, which is, I don't know, hive mind. I mean, we've all played Starcraft. We noted this. Which is a big deal on this, though, because of the fact that they found it,

it fairly, the Imperium found it fairly quickly that these were controlled, puppeteered, because once they killed certain organisms, they killed certain things in the, on the field of battle that Tarynans would just run around and do nonsense, basically. They would attack whatever. Yeah. They would hide from whatever. Once you pull out, I mean, what we call a synaptic lynch pin out of the army, they would lose, they seem to lose purpose. They would move more animalistic.

Correct. But so we don't know how this functions. We just know that it does function. Yeah. We just know that it does function. And we have commander units that are basically transmitters. That's what we understand from experience of getting lucky and blowing the right. thing up. Yeah. And we still don't know if this is one consciousness, five consciousness,

you know, but we do know that a larger consciousness is controlling the Tarynance, period. Yep. Now, some units, though, do have the ability to work independent of the hive mind. Lictors are an example of this, uh, genius dealers. They actually seem to be able to operate without contact. And they imbue them with their own. These are specifically engineering. Gene Stilers are the most, jean steelerers and lictus are, are, Victor's are the most famous. Yeah. The other thing, too, about them is the way they operate.

So it is a locust swarm. The tyranids are not a conquering species, where they're taking worlds and then converting them over to being their worlds. They come in, they consume every last piece of biomass on that planet and move on to the next one.

Independence Day. Yeah. This was the plot of Independence Day. For those of you who aren't American and didn't ever watch it, or maybe you did watch it. It's a decent-ish film with a lot of terrible parts in it. That's what I would say. Starring Will Smith.

Pre-slapped, that came out in the 90s. That was pretty not bad. Screw you, Independence Day was awesome. Watch it again. No, because it will not be as awesome.

Watch it again. You're like, oh, I'd say don't ruin my childhood, but I was wildly an adult by the time. It's not, I mean, that's what I said.

People don't ruin my childhood. Rewatch Goonies, it's still good. Rewatch it. Independence Day. Like, oh, this kind of sucked. Also, they made a second movie. It was wow.

Yeah, didn't watch that one. You should. Last one, though, about them is we do now, they seem to have a very key goal once they're in the solar system. And that is holy terra. I'm literally gathering Chi together right now, physically holding my hands, you and my Wussah, because this is one of my favorite and least favorite at the exact same time. Yeah. things about Tarynx is the Astronomicon is effectively a bug zapper that they are drawn to

and they are originally drawn to to to pull them into the galaxy. Is this cool or is it lame? Depends on my day. Yeah, really roll a six-sided on a four-up. I think it's awesome on a one, two, three. I think it's stupid because I like the idea of it drew them to the galaxy. I hate that they're still going to... We're going to the second.

But that's probably just more like it's what's drawing them. when they're in the galaxy to it. True. But I'm saying it's a bug light. They're bugs. I mean, it's just, it is what it is. But one thing about that, though, even though the GW has written it, they're not rushing towards it, like the way Forrest was or Abadden was.

That's the thing is. They're moving with a direction of the galaxy. But is it a purpose? My thing is that what is their end? We don't know their end goal. I guess that's one of the biggest mysteries. Screw it. I think it's cool again.

I roll the four up. Yeah. Because they're- like the mystery, it's cool. Because they're not going. Like, if this was their goal, they would be be lying and they're not. They're meandering. Like, the tiernids aren't going in a straight line.

You would say, this is what our end goal is. I would argue that's because they have to. The problem for the tyrants, and we're going to get into this more later, is that effectively, they're not self-sufficient. In order to invade, they have to conquer, consume, and then move on to the next planet. Well, they have to make new tanks, basically. Well, they have also to feed themselves. They are biology.

So when you are biology, you have to add energy to biology. You know, the inverse here is the necrons. The necrons have mastered energy. So the necrons, in theory, could make no new necrons and go anywhere in the galaxy that they want to go. The tyrantids would actually starve to death. So that's kind of the flip side of them. So while they have a purpose where they're going. They have to conquer or they just don't exist.

Yeah, exactly. Or they just starve the death. So that's kind of a key piece of them. So under though, the origins of the, of the, Tyrnids in the galaxy. And we're going to end up talking about a game here in a minute that both Brad and I played. What are you going to? I'm going to talk about it right now. Let's do this. Give it a second. Give me a second and we'll get there. Fine. Heat it up. You know what? I'm going to pour. Yeah, you pour wine. I'll set the stakes. We'll be right back after a quick break. So the Ternet invasion starts officially in M-41, but they've been in the galaxy massively longer via these things that we call Space Hulks.

hold, hold. This is like the scene in Braveheart. So for millennia, you know, species of the Milky Way have been leaving the explore the dark space beyond. We don't know what's in the dark space beyond. We don't know bad things are out there.

Nothing good. Nothing good. In sci-fi, absolutely zero good. Dark space always bad. So you get out there, ships die. You can be something simple as just a pressure loss, a system failure. Who knows? But these giant ships

eventually die, and then they end up drifting back into the Milky Way. This is also a warp thing, but continue. Yeah. It's going to be warp, but this is, it can be a ship that was a drift in the warp. The demons just rip the thing to shreds.

You know what I'm saying? The warp in my Brad theory is space hulks and things like that exist because of the fact that it's like an undertow, pulls, these things back. Oh, okay. Because physics-wise, whatever direction they were going in, they keep going in.

Yeah, they could have been. I was thinking more like emergency, you head back. But you're right. That actually makes more sense. Also, but I just feel that there's so many of them. Because space hulks, look at how I randomly got us over to there before it was time. We're getting there. Space hokes are gigantic.

I cannot even explain how big they are. Well, yes and no. The problem with space hulks, the term space hulks, yes, we have. It is an all-compassing. But it also could just be a freighter that came back. What happens is that with Space Hulks is that when they reappear in the Milky Way, either by dropping out of the warp, reappearing or just drifting in, this little small ship no one really gives a crap about. But the giant ones, everyone does. And people to say, ooh.

They have resources. Yeah. I'm going to go raid this thing, which is objectively such a terrible idea. Well, it is after you find the first couple because they are always. full of badness. Yeah. There's nothing. It's never,

whatever made this thing a Hulk in space probably left a little bit of a mark. Your best case scenario is everything inside of it is dead and just a horror show. And that's very much

so the best case because the worst case is insta death. Actually, no, that's the middle case. The worst case is not insta death. I'll say the worst case is you get drug into the warp

And you do insta death every day at 11. It's full of demons, Drew Kari, or we're going to get to them, jing stealers. And this, okay, I got to give a shameless plug. Eventually, GW will give us some free stuff for doing this. Space Hulk is wildly super fun to play. Space Hulk's one is actually, I think it may have got me into the game. I can't remember what I played first, but I remember playing a lot of Space Hulk. You are, you know, let's just set the stage for it.

When a Space Hulk appears, everyone, not everyone, everyone, but species rush to it to go loot it. Now, what you're going to do is you also are aware that it's probably not vacant. You show up in force. A common group that does this is space marines. They will send space Marines. In the game, Space Marine Terminators. And the game is.

You showed up with a squad. You showed up with a squad of Space Marine Terminators, and the Space Hulk was full of Gene Stealers. And this is that, if you play it right, I'm saying, when you play Space Hulk, think alien, the first alien movie, because these gene stealers are showing up from the rafters, from the walls. They're, they've infiltrated everywhere in the ship. They're coming out of the ventilation.

And if you set the stage right, space hooks fun, period. But if you really set the, if you're a D&D kind of guy like we are. Oh, Space Hulk's fan. Yes. Because they're hiding on every corner. They actually kind of remade it with boarding actions. I was really happy to see when GW brought back boarding actions. because I can now write my own version of it,

which is a bit more fun. Yeah, it's a really, really good game. But what these were was Space Hulk is how that GeneSoters first got into the galaxy. And we mentioned a few minutes ago, genealers are one of the few things like Lictors that can operate fully independently of the High Fleet. So in the earlier portions of the game,

the idea was they would just send, these Space Hulks would just drift with Gene Sillers on them and to the galaxy. And we'll cover in a later episode what they would do when they interacted with a new race. Well, Gene Steelers infested them. Yeah.

And that's a big thing. And Gene Steelers were, again, they scammed alien, but whatever. When you look at the movie Alien, they were that intelligence plus. Yeah. The genius dealers were designed to be an invasive force sitting in things. But anyway, the game was awesome. You took your term meters. You had to just survive a ship of nightmares.

And the nightmares were genius dealers. And there was. just kind of unlimited gene stealers in the game, to be honest with you. Because they didn't hear it should be that way. I'm sorry. Because in the game, there was just more. The latest codex, endless swarm. Because think about Space Hulk, you just tried to, your main goal was just to not die.

That was your objective. GW makes really good RPG games. Yeah. Space Hulk and Blackstone Fortress are just fantastic. Boarding action is good, too. Boarding action is a great one. Boarding action. I will encourage you guys if you want to play.

a very thematic version of this game. Kill team and boarding action. Kill team and board. Kill teams like so. I wish I found Kill Team before I found 40K. Now I'm invested in 40K for forever. But Kill Teams is superior. I actually, I just,

full transparency. The number one reason I don't play Kill Team is I just own too many models. It would depress me to have this much stuff and just play with that little. Games also wildly faster. Yeah, it's cricket. So, but if you haven't played space Hulk, I would actually go, people ask for this all time. I want to make sure we go.

The reading material that goes along with Space Hulk, there's also multiple short stories. There's a lot of stuff online. There's a lot of stuff that is canon for Space Hulk that's out there. Great reads. Grab a rulebook. They're actually really cheap. The old Space Book stuff. You can get on.

Honestly, GW's made enough money off it. Yep. Feel free to steal this. Yeah, it's a very fun greed, though, because people ask all the time, hey, what are you talking about? Give us some references. The spacehole grates are really good. But so kind of with that, the reason this is important is we talk about first contact, where the tyrants came from, et cetera. Remember, the first rogue traders, the emperor signed off on them.

We've had rogue traders for at this point of 11,000, 12,000 years moving throughout the galaxy. one of the key pieces they had to do was explore the fringes of the galaxy. And a lot of them just stopped radio-a-old. And when we say first, we're going to say first contact in a couple times in a minute of here. First contact is 47 air quotes around it because that is not, not, not, not first contact. We've had so much contact with effectively gene stealers and lictors before that because they are the four deployers. and they've been the four deployers, while these high fleets...

Yeah, and there was another note I also think was really important here that I made, that I do think we should point out, is that tyrannids are on the edge of the galaxy and unknown. In a galaxy from a mankind standpoint, full of known threats, mankind is fighting chaos very actively. Eldar, every so often, dark Eldar are a fun pain in the butt. Orcs, who... Orks actually probably predate... All of it.

Well, orcs predate chaos in the battle. Remember, because mankind and Eldar weren't actually fighting during the age of... And they're semi-fighting now, so it's... Right, but orcs were. Orcs have always been, yeah. So they weren't looking for... When you're at war everywhere, Kasi all the time, you're not looking for new threats. So a lot of the tier and stuff that was probably happening on some of these fringes just was a, like, I don't even want to look into it.

Think about the number. But there's also the number of, and we've talked about this, go back and listen to a couple of our episodes in the past. There's a lot of Xenos threats just that barely get mentioned. Oh, yeah. And even, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's super powerful Zenos. So when a small group boards a space Hulk and encounters scary stuff. That's a great point.

It's like, who cares? Nobody. We read this, these things with a bunch of extra arms, ran at us. What happened? The terminus shot them all. Okay. Yeah.

And you're like, where was it? Like, it's a floating Hulk. Where is it now? No, I don't know. We blew it up. Okay, cool. And that becomes the end of the story. No one understands that there's more behind them.

Right. This is a vanguard of a possibly endless enemy. It's potentially, well, actually, technically they are actually infinite because they can. Yes, that's true. They just make more. One more piece I want to dive into kind of help people understand

what we're talking about here is that the Milky Way A, we have multiple galaxies in our universe. We don't really know all of them. We know most of them. There is dark space around it. So we're going to do what I call the Neil deGrasse Tyson side step here, just because A, helps at the stage, and B, lets me shit on stuff. John's going to do Neil deGrasse Tyson by being, making it less fun.

Okay. You know what? You need this. I do need that wine, actually. So success. Anyway, sound you're about to hear is, this, today's cast, not brought to you by me, oh, my. But if they would like to send a.

like to. Holy crap. Like, good God, we will wear your clothes everywhere. End of toe. Anyway, so the tyranids, they're coming from a lagsy. They're not a warp race. So everything else we talk about, like, they use the warp to travel. The tyrants are not a warp race, but they do touch it, but they're also not a warf entity.

But one of the biggest things about this is why we've had, when I say first contact has 47 air coats on it, is because they sent forward deployers thousands of years ago, basically. Yeah. And because the rest of their force is taking the slow road to nowhere to get here. But it does matter because they can't do warp travel. So the thing is that tyrants have to move through the galaxy in a linear fashion. They don't get the jump and move through stuff. Yes, but they have weird travel.

Well, it's like Tim of the Necron. They have some weird travel, but it is still limited. So just to kind of set the stage here, you're about to get. a bitch fest, deal with it. The Milky Way is one of the largest galaxies in universe. It's about 100,000 light years wide, and it contains about 100 to 400 billion stars. I didn't know that until I went and looked it up.

It's several. Yeah, and that's annoying because mankind, according to GW, is covering the majority of the galaxy. No, we control, like... Well, no, but if you actually look at it from the map of the galaxy, we're controlling over 50% of it, And we have one million star systems. So that is, it comes a lot of zeros,

0,000, 0.01% of the galaxy. Yeah, there's stuff happening in the Milky Way. Oops. Anyway, but the important part here is dark space. So dark space is the gap between galaxies. Up until about 1997, again, you can tell I. I do some research here, guys. We actually thought there was nothing in dark space.

We thought the in between galaxies is nothing. And then we got better telescopes. and we're like, no, they're actually, there actually are, but they're very few and far between. We do have... But there's topography there, too. Yeah, we do have stars in between them. So the reason that this matters is that,

you know, once you get outside of the galaxy, you are 100, I think it's 50,000 light years to the next to Andromeda. So there is a massive gap here, and we don't really know what's out there. So this is really important because any intergalactic system that wants to travel from one galaxy to the next,

that gap there is insane. So this is why we don't know where the tyrantids are coming from. And we're going to cover this a bit more. Originally, the tyrant's invaded from one part of our galaxy, and then later it's from another part of our galaxy. From the opposite side. Exactly. So now it becomes this question of how big is this army?

Yeah, because Andromeda, for example, is the next, closest system to the Milky Way. Andromeda's 2 million light years away. So if you were, it moved, so just for math, if you're moving at light speed, it would take you two million years to get from Andromeda to the Milky Way. Andromeda, by the way, is kind of what you would get east of the galaxy. If you look at the GW map and you look at the way the galaxy's written, like, so. So, why am I doing this tangent?

Because this helps with build a mystery of the tyrantz. Because they start invading from all sections of the galaxy. So you go, where did they originate from? I don't know. Also, is this an encircling move? Again, you don't know how big the turn-ins are. With them coming from different sections of the galaxy, if they're actually making a slow move into us,

that means that they are wildly, the just crazily bigger threat than every. you think of it? The size of the tyrannids is absolutely incredible. I mean, when we look at it from this perspective, especially because they're, I think it's because they're coming from dark space, we can't see them. We don't know, you can, that there's no light with a telescope I can't see out there. And as we're covered later, they also block out the warp. So, and listen, I'm just going to throw it out there. This is going to be real bad for the Imperium if all of the high fleets are basically random scout squads. Well, it's over. I mean, if that's the

case. When the real force shows up, you're going to be real bummed. Yeah. So what this does matter, though, is the tyrantids, the theory is that their entire species is coming into the Milky Way right now. And they're going to use the Milky Way to consume them, and then they have to move on to the next? What we don't know is, have they done this before? You know, did they eat another galaxy already? Are they going to eat, you know, what's coming? We don't know. And that's what makes them terrifying. crazy, terrifying. And they don't, again, which is why this is not stupid.

They don't anymore. We don't know why they came, what they came for, and you can't negotiate with them. You can't talk to them. At all. They don't communicate at all with you. Yeah. It is weird they have vocal cords. I'm not going to get to tyranny biology.

Some of them do. Yeah, it's just going to be weird. So let's talk about what brought the tyrantids into the galaxy. And this has been rewritten a little bit. A little bit. bit? Just a tad. Just a tad. So we know the tyranids can see into the warp sort of. And we know this because they seem to follow warp energy. They seem to... Well, they also could manipulate warp energy. They're weird masters of the warp while not touching the warp. It's weird. Because like chaos demons

don't like, they're aware of their existence, but they can't infest them. We'll get to that a little bit. But so the tyrannids seem, my theory on this is just that since, Everything that touches the warp leaves a mark. The Tyrannids, they're using a variation of warp site to find things to consume. It helps them understand it, which would make sense because they have to travel such incredible distances. They can't. And again, they're a living being.

Are they probably using some variation of stasis? Yeah, we know that they, but still, there's a limited amount of energy that they have. So they have to make their move strategically. They also, one of the biggest things about Tirinans that I think is wild is they don't, they use the warp, they don't travel through the warp, and they don't have an effect on the warp as far as GW writings. Yep, which is interesting, to say the least. You know, the only people that have ever used the warp and didn't have an effect on the warp, old ones. Are we hinting the later part of this episode? Weird. On our last episode, we talked about the Astronomicon and the joy.

that that thing is. Black ship, otherwise known as fun ships. Yeah, the fun ships of like, this is super, take you guys back to the ultimate carnival ride. Anyway, the Astronomicon is just a giant beacon and allows you to see it from anywhere in the war. That being said, when you make a lighthouse. It's, I was to say, you beeped to it.

In the end, it's just a straight lighthouse. So humanity can see it. Eldar can see it. Chaos can see it. Terranids can see it. Everything can see the Astronomicon. It does, though, have a limited reach. We do talk about this a little bit.

Last one, it's about 70,000 light years. So it's kind of when you get to the fringes, it's a very dim light that's just a little bit out there. And yet further into Galaxy, you're very well aware of it. But what we didn't talk about last time, because we were saving it for this one, is it's not the first of its kind. The Necrons built their own similar,

But they weren't warp entities. They were more anti-they're, all their stuff is anti-war. But it's Blackstone. The problem with Blacks was Blackstone is both warp energy and anti-warp energy at the, well, it synergizes. I mean, it promotes, it amplifies both. Yeah. It amplifies your ability to negate the warp.

And if you have the warp, it amplifies your ability to use the warp. Yeah. So the Necrons built something called Pharaohs, which were kind of all over the galaxy. And what they were was, these actually, to those of you who heard my tirade in the last one, would triangulate your position because there's more than one of them. They didn't know where they were. They built them around the galaxy because with the necrons, there was. Necrons didn't use warp, but they used phasing technology.

They could actually, they could effectively teleport across the galaxy. Used Einstein bridges, basically. Yeah. And so they would jump across the galaxy, and the pharaohs would be, were the way that they would triangulate position to be able to do this. They built them all over the galaxy. When they went into hibernation, they turned these off, except for one. And this is actually one, we're going to not give this story the justice it deserves,

but whatever, we're going to do it real quick. Horace heresy, to help Horace out, chaos made massive warped storms. Only around certain places, of course. This meant, and they did to trap the imperialists in certain areas. When a warpstorm really gets up and going, even the Astronomicon gets obscured. So your navigators can now no longer do anything. So for a period of time, all the warp travel was like really short jumps.

The key thing here was that Gilliman and his Legion end up getting just stuck. With the triad. Yeah. Lions sanguinness and Bobby G. got stuck. And while they were stuck, they found a world called Sotha, which had one of these beacons on it. And Gilliman realized he could actually use. this beacon as a staging point. Sorry, everyone, but this is one of my favorite stories because Conrad Cruz is one of my

favorite primarks because of the fact that he's the Joker, period. Sorry, he's just a primark Joker. And he did nothing that did anything good, but he just harassed them around this place. And they didn't even know what it was, but he was there to just screw with that. Yeah, a pain in the ass. And so the ultramarines used this beacon to reach out. And did they start launching a new Imperium there? That's a fun story for another day.

Because there were some... Cofcoff sanguinius is the emperor. Yeah. Oops. Anyway, by using it as this meeting point, Blood Angels, a Dark Angel, Ultramines, we're all in this one spot. The Trader Legions noticed this and decided,

well, we should also take that out because holy crap, The greatest force of the entire loyalist is now in this one area. It's the three most powerful legions and they're all just hanging out and getting ready. I mean, they sent one guy. Well, yeah, they didn't try. They just sent the Conrad in his butt. They said Conrad went just basically make it irritating.

Effectively what they said was Conrad, go be Conrad. Which he was all about. I mean, to be fair, go Conrad go. Anyway, long story short, night lords infiltrates Sotha, blah, blah, blah, battle, more battle, conflict. And then in a giant twist of GW writing, a single person sacrificed themselves with nobility to save everybody else. The rest of the story is actually really cool. Read that story. Yeah, but anyway, what happens is that they overload the pharaohs, which blows up and then blows up the night lord fleet. Well, the thing is, is that one of the reasons Necrons are such a threat.

again, mastered energy, all of their beacon, their structures have effectively a potential energy of almost infinite. Right. But what happens when they blow up the pharos here with this, because this is, this, at the breath point, the amount of energy stored in this one device is so insane that you just set off this incredible firework in the middle of the galaxy. I mean, in the story, too, they vaporized that it wasn't just a, a big boom. It was a, again, almost infinite amounts of energy are contained in the

nuclear explosion on Earth, but make that in the middle of a system. That level of size. And also make the nuclear weapon would be a small firecracker. It would be a sparkler compared. I mean, from the perspective of like the thing that on Earth is the most destructive force ever, that level of destructive force, but it can do the same thing to an entire system. Like, it's insane. This. in theory, triggers kind of a giant flash that can be seen from outside of the galley. Were the tyrantids already traveling?

Were they not? We have no idea. No idea. The theory, one of the, kind of the, one of the theories, this is in the codex. This is the idea that the tyrantids, this flash occurs. And a species that is,

as we just serve in a dark space, traveling through the millions of light years of darkness, that is dark space, in some sort of stasis, naturally is triggered. by this bright flash of light and pays some attention to it and begins moving towards that light.

Again, this occurred around M-31. The Tarynids show up in M-41. Again, air-close. Yeah. Did they were already here for a while? Well, they should have enforced in 41. They'd obviously been here. Because we now know that there's old bioships

that they've actually found of Tiranids from like M-35. We know they've been around. and touch in Milky Way, but this seems to be what brings them in. I think, just my theory, is that the High Fleet always knew, just because of the cluster of stars in the Milky Way, that there was something of value there. I agree with that theory.

I think they were already on their way here. But I also think that they were already on their way here for different reasons. Yeah, and so we're going to get in some fans, some stuff in a second. This will be all fan things. Oh, yeah. Because my idea, this was kind of like, I used the, the first of the eye of Soron, where, you know, Saran's looking all over the place, but the second that he detects the ring, his eye just moves. It's like, boom, we're going. That's what this was.

They're moving slowly toward the galaxy, because they assume there's something there, and then this flash goes off. They don't know it's a pharaoh's exploding. To them, it's an explosion of life that exists there, which is food. let's go get there. Because it was, it's still very far away. Now, let's have some more fun about fan theory time. The other fan theory that I read about this, and by fan theory, I mean, read it, was that it was actually a combination of events.

Because this explosion at Sotha is about 1 to 2,000 years after the birth of Sla Nesh, which also would have been a pretty, pretty big. I mean, Sotha was a joke compared to the birth of Sla Nash,

which destroyed the Eldar home world in all of their home systems. And ripped a hole in the galaxy. Yeah.

So the idea of this spandary, which I just like a lot, is that the tyranids are somewhere way out in dark space. The birth of Sleinash happens

and they go, ooh, food. Let's start moving that way. then the explosion of Sotha gives them a kind of a second trigger so that it's no longer, I think there's something there, that now I know there's something there. But they were already true. Yeah, so let's speed up.

So we talked a little bit about what a high fleet is, but what not mix it up. So we haven't really talked about space travel in the 41st millennia, but, and we're going to get more in a future cast, all beings use some sort of ship, though, to move around. So the Eldar have giant ships. They basically live on the orcs jury rig stuff. A box that they think. A box that they think, well, why wouldn't it?

This works. They all hold hands. Necrons. Even Tao have giant shipish things. I'm trying to not shit on them as much. But anyway, it's impossible to move people without this. And the tier is no difference. You're sure your word.

I'm so proud of you for it. But my quintillions. Yes. Yeah. I looked up the word, it is quintillions of people. It's actually more than that. You get a gold star for that. There's some serious Google of like, hey, I should look this up after like 37 casts.

I don't know. Maybe something. Maybe something. I literally have two cell phones, one from work, one from personal and on three computers. I should probably be able to use the internet at some point. So we're about to describe the tier. Fleet. For those of you who've played StarCraft. It's that.

It's that. So you guys can skip ahead. You know what? I'm going to give GW a little more props than this. If you've read, not just watched Starship Troopers, it is actually more of that. Yeah. Also, such a

different book than movie. The book's awesome. It's incredible. The movie's fine. We'll be right back after a quick break. So the Tyrannids Remember, don't manufacture anything. They grow everything. They grow.

There's no tier in factories. True, true. They are factories. Yeah, exactly. So everything they use is a bio-weapons. So, you know, I will say laws of physics imply there is probably some work power at play here. Like, I'm not 100% how this would actually work. Maybe they're descended from a being that had strong connections.

to the warp. Can I talk about the fact that Tyrnid weapons are the grossest in the galaxy now? I'm trying to think to the death card? Here, I'll give you

A1 Tiranin weapon. Tiranin's fire, a superheated cockroach that hits you, crawls into you, and explodes. You know who else does that? The Orks.

That's what a squig launcher does. That is true, actually. It's not as-gru. It's more funny with that. But it's okay, because you're what a squig is? A tyranny. Their problems are solved.

So with this level of movement, it's the same with the high fleet. So the entire fleet is made up of literally living ships that are also the factories we were just talking about. Which are also interconnected, though. We got to remember that all of this stuff operates as one mind. And so as these massive ships transporting move through, they're consuming worlds. They're actually growing. and hatching and evolving new species. Well, they're gaining intelligence also.

Each, I'll get to that later, each conflict is that they grow. But these fleets take part in every element of a tyrannid invasion, whereas like a humanity fleet, you'd think of it as the fleet would come in, it would drop off the soldiers. So soldiers would then fight. Then the next fleet would come in to bring the terror forming. Then the fleet would come in with bring the people. The tyrantids, it's one, and it's only one fleet. So the Tyrannid fleet is, in theory, an all-encompassing segment of their army.

There is no, like, for example, a Tyrannid fleet doesn't have, like, doesn't invade. We're going to cover this next episode, how they do it. But they don't invade, and the next chunk of ships come in. It's the same ship, just ripping a planet to shreds. And so this brings to the question of how they move through the galaxy. And this seems actually kind of cool. So we're going to talk about the, I always like to give GW props when they do stuff right. GW will,

sometimes going on a rabbit hole of writing. And this one, they did a good job of. The tyranids don't use the warp to travel. So they have to move faster than light.

And rather than just say they can move faster than light, which is what I would have expected someone to write, they actually wrote out a whole thing called a narval. And then the reason I like this writing is the narval both explains

how the tyranids can move through the galaxy, but also explains the limitations in their movement through the galaxy. They do jump moves. Yeah. So the Narval effectively creates a gravity well between the fleet and a target

point. And then that gravity well rips the ship in the fleet. A Battlestar Galactica move. Yep. This is exactly what a narwhal is. Look, I'm trying to give them some credit for not it is a good, that is

it's just, I know, it's incredibly ironic for a company as litigious surrounding intellectual properties, GW is, they're incredible. It's just Battlestar Galactica. I know joy in ripping all Battlestar Galactica, Dune. I'm just saying that if you know,

if you watch Battlestar Galactica, that's what a NARW is. I know. It's a jump. It's just more fun. And it's exactly described, if you want a better description, watch Battlestar Galactica because they talk about how it works.

And it's exactly what the NARWAL does. Fair. Anyway, Fair. So the cool thing about the Narval that does hold it back a little bit is it can only work between two points. It can't work through. So the tyrants don't have the ability. If there are planets or a system between where they are and where they want to be, they have to go to that point.

They can't jump through it because much like in Star Wars, you know, if you engage your warp drive, not warp drive. You engage your hyperspace drive. You engage your hyperspace drive. If there's an asteroid belt in the middle, you die. That it should be. So the tyrantus can only therefore invade in straight systems. The other thing that's actually important here is it creates a gravity well between the two systems. You can detect this.

And we're going to talk about that more on some later casts. But you actually now, you do have some warnings that the tyranniers are coming. Because planets, all of an earthquake, solar flares, all this stuff just starts rocking through the system. It's a heads up that the Tyrannid fleets on its way. I mean, it'd be a really good heads up if it were not the most bureaucratically inefficient system ever. Yeah. Well, if you were organized. Yeah.

You're like, hey, we totally know they're coming. And then you have to tell 43 middle managers to get the note sent. And then they have 43 more other guys that have to stamp it so that somebody else can see that message. It seems like in the latest version, now that a call. Kof Kof Kostodes are involved in the process. They'd be a bit more, they're operating a bit quicker in the... Because they also have a real good

disciplinary status of, I will cut your head off if I don't get this message. So this is kind of the... The other piece that also does come with a tyrannid's is one of, I think, the most powerful and coolest elements is the shadow of the world. That's amazing. So, as we said,

no one can explain, and this is a good thing, how the tyrannids interact with the warp. Which again, let's go back to it again. They have warp users, zonthropes. They use warp powers, like devastating war powers to destroy things. Oh, yeah. And not just a little bit of lightning.

They pick up tanks and destroy. Yeah, this isn't lightning bolt. This is actually, I mean, the spoiler for episode three. They remove the craft world. Yeah. They do some real. shit here. And the best part is the fleet by itself. Well, yes, I'm not wrong, but also I'm not right.

The synaptic, any of the synaptic entities gives off what is just a nightmare around them that affects the warp. It also makes you, we did the- Psycher? Well, we talked about it. We talked about blanks. It has a similar effect on non-psychers, where you just, you have a sense of dread, this overwhelming terror that is everywhere about you. And that's just a thing they do. They just do. What's terrifying about the shadow and the warp is it really does.

It blocks the warp completely. So as you come in, astropaths cannot communicate. Which is such a huge deal, because when you're talking about the Imperium, which is effectively trying to light the fires of Gondor to let everybody know when something happens, you don't get to let anybody know that this happened. And you don't leave any evidence behind because they consume the entire world, the entire system.

One thing I want to point that, when I was reading, I think it's important here. It's actually the inverse of a blank, though, whereas a blank just warp doesn't exist within them. What this seems to be is actually, Actually, the shadow of the warp is just all the tyrannids talking to each other. It's overwhelming. It's billions.

Yeah. I've got this. I actually thought about this a long time ago with this because that's how big of a nerd I am. But I think that the shadows of a warp is overwhelming white noise. Yeah, I agree. And they talk about it a little bit in that point where like psychers all of a sudden just like they go insane because their brain just gets filled with. And it would make sense. Imagine hearing, you watch you walking past an ant colony.

and hearing every single communication those answer-making in your brain at once. It would just shut you down. And that's what they talk about. So that's why it's not a force feel that prevents the astropaths from speaking through it. It's just so much noise. They just can't communicate through it and it envelops them. And so they talk about that psychers, when the shutter up gets nearby, they just get over them with voices and sounds.

And they just feel like the things are really scratching at their mind. psychers commit suicide. Pretty consistently, what a tyranny in fleet comes in, not even because they know what's happening, but because of what's going on in their brain is so horrid that makes a black shift seem fun. I do want to point out that we're going to talk about this more later, but I have to touch on this because we're already talking about it.

This is one of the most terrifying aspects of the Ternets is what the hell is controlling that that puts out that much power that it can control quadillions of organisms, but also it's real-time communicating with every single thing in the fleet at the exact same time. Holy shit. That's a powerful intelligence. That's a really, really good point. I mean, that's terrifying.

Yeah, that's a really, really good point. Their day-to-day, I'm just doing shit, is the most powerful. powerful thing that's ever happened, ever. And so what this really matters is that when the Tiran fleet gets even just close to a system, this kicks in. That means a system's done. So you have no astropaths. It also means the navigators can't see in anymore.

So if you're coming to the fleet using FTL drives, you're fine. You can move in. This won't affect your FTL. But if you're trying to warp jump in, well, you can't see it. The only thing the Imperium is I gotten good about this is once they find a threat, they look for where they can't see. Right. And they go close to there.

And then move and then. Yep. And then FTL from there. FDL from there. But this is, yes, no astropaths, no messages. So this is what we're discussing earlier about, we don't know when the Tereans first got on here.

This is why, because it's just a period, an area which just go dark. You have no communication to it. Meanwhile, Abidon's in his like, like, seventh crusade. And so you're just there like,

you know what? I don't care. I don't care. Or send, send some rogue traders over there, see what's going on, but I don't care. You don't realize it was actually the greatest threat to the galaxies, just eating your planets. So with all that, let's have some real fun and talk about why are they here. This is the part, I've been holding Brad back this whole episode. I don't even know how much of this is going to be edited. Leave this in. No, we're doing this.

Because I've tried to talk about this three times so far. And I've cut bread off everything. Every single time, he said no. We're getting there. So here's what we know. We know the Tyrannids come from outside of the galaxy. We know that they're heading towards Terra. But they're not making it, again, bra. They're not belining towards Tara. If they were just, that was our end goal. True.

And that's it. They would make a straight line. They are not making a straight line. So I think there are kind of two things they look at here. Are they coming here to search for something? Are they just here randomly to eat? Or the really fun one, are they running? The scariest thing is, are they running away from?

What are the hell are they running away from? Are we a stop on the way out because something else is coming? So, because we don't know, have they been to other galaxies, we don't know what have they done. So we're going to drive into kind of where I think are the four best fan theories that exists. Starting off with probably the, what is likely the most accurate, but just the one that's the least fun, which is the locus. It's one. It's a locust one. They just, they are a borderline mindless race.

See, I refuse to believe this one, though, because to control the, the power of intelligence that it takes to run all of this. Oh, I totally agree. It is just, I refuse to believe that you're just derping through the galaxy when you have this overwhelming intelligence. Yeah, this, this theory is just to kind of. Hatchel off from this theory is that the tyrants are actually not an intellectually evolved race. They're just, they're an instinctive race and all the changes they make where they create new life forms and all this stuff. It's just a means of survival.

Purely survival. They're just a wild purpose. Yeah. At this point in time, they're a wildly powerful AI that sucks. Yeah. That's really all. And I hate that theory.

Yeah. Everyone does. But the way that I look at this is like the tyrantid's biggest problem is that they can't farm. So all of their energy, it's true, all of their energy comes from consuming something moving on to the next one. They've never, they never mastered irrigation. Sure, but it's still just, it makes sense. And from a basic standpoint, it makes sense because they became the perfect beings to continue to consume and move. And this is what a locust swarm does.

A locust swarm will just eat and eat until it gets, until it doesn't have enough food source, in which case it just dies. So that's what Tyrion. This is the theory of Tyrids. And when I say this is the fan theory, this is kind of the closest thing to what GW's written. So, yeah. They allude to more, though. They always allude to more. Yeah.

So let's move on to more fun ones. The next one is that they're searching for a great power. And that this goes Brad's concept. They do have a higher purpose. They do have a goal. And they're searching the galaxy, they're searching the universe for something. And yeah, this one, the hive mind has a plan. this is why they're trying to find new worlds.

I don't think they're trying to find peace for themselves in a galaxy. But it makes sense that this theory, this isn't my favorite theory by far, but this theory makes sense that they're coming here because also things like the Eye of Terror would make a great amount of sense. Yeah. Because the I of Terror, well, the Rift now is. But it came in during the Eye of Terror. Right.

Is effectively an endless source of power. So if you're looking for something to run, run your race. This makes sense. The one I like about this would be that the Tyrannid hive mind doesn't know what the warp is, but is touching the warp, and it's looking for a way to eat the warp effectively.

And that would, to me, makes sense. So, like, the Astronomicon, the Eye of Terror would be... Yeah, it'd be, but it'd be infinite. If they were looking for just something to drain, you... The warp is forever. And this would give them the alternate power up. Right. They could just keep drawing power from this forever.

Because instead of consuming worlds, you'd be consuming the warp, which is forever. Yeah. And this feeds really well into the next one, because it would be the same purpose, that they're actually not coming to, well, they're still coming to consume the galaxy. They're never good guys. Yeah, but they're coming because they're being chased by something else. And they're coming to, we are a stopping point.

And so it's that same thing of like the Astronomicon, Eye of Terror, whatever it is, are a way to power up to either fight back or to get themselves to Andromatic. I mean, this is so terrifying, though, because what the hell are they fleeing from? Oh, God. Like, Jesus. Yeah, there's not, there's not, I mean, if this, if what tyrannids can do and the power and the size they are are are afraid of something. Yeah, bad news, bears. You know who they're not fleeing?

I feel very confident in this statement. The Tao. You know what's... Actually, that would be the greatest, like, rewrite of all time, that the Tao were actually like a splenest. of the most powerful, like, race that exists, like, like Adromeda. And that's the race that's been,

it's chasing to eliminate the tyrants and just our galaxy. Just ending civilizations. Let's, let's run with that. That's what it is. Like the town and the Milky Way. They are the race from the expanse.

Also, watch the, watch the show, read the books. The books are even better. Oh, yeah. Sorry, that was a fun one. But they're that race. Yeah, that's what it just ended,

sentient, everything. That's what. that's what's really going on. But let's go to the real one. The one that ever wants. So this is the one. When we talk about, it's the real one.

GW hasn't written this yet. This is the oldest fan fiction there is, though. Yeah. And it is the greatest. This showed up from like the beginning of the game. Because people are clever. And we are all, the fun thing about GW is that it's all made up.

So they can do whatever they want. And the hope is in an element of like Peter Pan here, if enough of us believe this next theory, maybe they'll make it real. So this is that. that the tyrantids are the old ones. And also, they're the remnants. They're the brain injured.

I was in an accident, old ones, because the old ones had to flee. Mm-hmm. They were getting killed. By the enslavers. The enslavers. The enslavers came out of the war and targeted them. And the idea is that the idea of this one,

and actually, as Brad said, because this is so old, it's been written very, very well. the concept to kind of catch everyone up is that the enslavers hunt psychic beings. So in order to protect themselves from the enslavers, the old ones would have severed their connection to the war. And fled. And fled.

They effectively made the biggest jump to somewhere else. And it could be, we don't know where we're going, but it can't be here. You can't be here. And as a result of all this, they would have had to then figure out a new way to communicate and doesn't use the warp. maybe like a centralized intelligence. And also this means that is the hive mine multiple old ones? Is that why the hive fleets are so different?

I love this thing. Let's go through what the old ones could do. Could they create life? Yep. Could they communicate kind of both in and outside? They were both in and outside the world. They made the original web. Cough, Cough, web weight.

Yep. All this seems to line up. And so the question then becomes, are the tyrannids a devolved? version of the old ones? Or are the tyranids, maybe there's only three or four old ones left, who've now merged into the hive mind and this is their project they've created. Again, or the hive mind is interconnected old ones and that's why they're different because each of the old ones has different hopes, dreams, and whatever's or cognitive abilities left. Remember, the old ones were also next level consciousness. They were literally creating life.

by doot-do-do-do. Did I have a computer? Nah, I'm just going to do some calculations. I'm going to do the same thing. Yeah, I'm going to do calculations in my head to make life. They were powerful sentience. You know what I mean? And in this theory, the tyranids are coming back to the galaxy,

much the same way the necrons set up the re-awakenedness. They had a timing, and now they're going to come back to the galaxy to consume it, you know, or to reconquer it. Well, a lot of the above because you can go, are they spiteful? I mean, I would be. Or it could just be actually my theory on this one is that they lost a lot of their intelligence. That would happen was you spend millions of years out there in the darkness. I mean, they did create.

Ternids are the ultimate adaptive race. They just, they will make things work no matter what. And that's why this lines up so well because you think about what they made. Look at the races that they created. We have, it wasn't humanity. you had the Joacharo who are just instinctively able to create a weapon. Whatever they want. You have the Eldar who they didn't actually create the uplifted them, but they gave them the ability.

I mean, they didn't create, but they did. But the best one is the orcs. And if you look at how the orcs function, how the Tyrannids function, it's pretty. It's very similar. Very similar. I mean, sorry, orcs. Orcs are one of my favorites, but Tiernids are just upgraded orcs. Oh, yeah, because the difference is orcs still have to fight.

there's a hierarchy in the interfight. One key thing on Tyrannins, tears on interfight. We have no record in any, in any codex in any story of tyrannids attacking other tyranids. So they seem to be fully unified in this, but in my mind, it would make sense that the old ones are more.

I think there's more old ones because the tyranins don't interfight, but the tyrants also don't help each other. Yeah, that is true. But that also could just be a self-preservation, when they could say, all right, I'm just saying the high fleets are all separate entities. Yes, they are. But they do touch,

and they never attack. Yep. Well, yeah, true. And that's why, because it would just, that's where, but this is one bread and I actually have this debate

outside of this. This is a really great rabbit hole to jump down, by the way, and I encourage all of you to do it because it actually is quite fun. I would love to have this in the Discord, everyone. Please, after you listen to this,

start a thread. I saw the threads. But if people ask, ask me for it, and I'll create the thread. Well, I don't even know what a thread means. I thought it was just like start a discussion. But also, this is how much I know,

about a channel actually. I can start a tier. What are the Tyrannids channel when we can have some fun with it. John's going to do this because I'm going to harp on him until he does do it now. Also, I'm going to do this so much. And he's going to keep telling me that the episode's not even out yet. Please shut up. Please shut up. And it's going to be awesome. All right. So with that, though, that's actually kind of where we wanted to end this episode, just to kind of give you guys a background of the tyranids. Our next episode, we're going to talk about the makeup of Tyrannid fleets, their armies, how they interact. and at more point how they invade a planet. And this is that because there's two key ways they do it, Gene Steelers and Other, which is actually,

ooh, I actually don't know what's the ones. The good news for your planet. Teen Steelers are way worse. Yeah, but the good news is that when Jesus doesn't invade your planet, you have to keep living on it for a while. Part two. Yeah. Part two, the sky starts, literally the entire thing.

I would rather at least try to fight as opposed to having everyone I know is actually a gene stealer. That's a good point. Yeah. Right about the time. I'm dying and I go, oh, man. Yeah, and then we'll also talk about what the Imperium or forces can actually do about a Tyrannid invasion. It's not, it involves fire and all of the fire.

But with that, please once again, like and subscribe to the cast and join the Discord. As you can see, this one's probably going to lead to quite a lot of Discord discussion because there's going to be quite a bit of fan theory kicking through here. It is the best place to ask us questions and provide us feedback. again, we are active in it. If there's anything we said in here that you thought was wrong or we forgot, you can tell us there

and you'll get a pretty quick reaction to it. But with that, this has been John Barciani and Brad Chester. This guy. See you guys next week.