Did Golden age of man fight off a Tyranid invasion?

[Battybattybats]

Some things to consider.

 

A, space hulks are adrift on the tides of the warp, where time runs strangely and which have been known to cause ordinary warp ships to sometimes arrive before they left. Thus Genestealers infesting Space Hulks could have traveled back in time.

 

B, Tyranids, who may have evolved from panspermia style life, may not normally 'swarm' like locusts eating everything, but may usually seed barren worlds with life to evolve then come back millennia later to reap the harvest, thus the multiple tyrannic deathworld flora discussed in the Forgotten Fleets previous codex lore mentioned earlier. The Pharos signal and the Astronomicon however may have activated the Swarm reflexes drawing countless gardening fleets together from multiple other galaxies devouring all in their path in their sudden voracious hunger.

 

C, some Tyranids could have ended up in the past thanks to Eldar throwing them through the warp.

 

D, the Tyranids might have been a last-ditch creation of the Old Ones to ensure life would survive the war in heaven.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

In response to D, I don't think so. The races created by the Old Ones are all pretty physically similar: bipedal, dual-armed humanoids. Eldar, Orks, even humans if you buy into that theory (I prefer to think we evolved on our own, but hey), the Tau (again, if you buy into the theory). Tyrannic physical morphology is so completely dissimilar to every other sentient product of the Old Ones that I find the idea difficult to countenance; after all, our experience with sentience is that people are creatures of habit.

[Panzer]

D also doesn't make much sense considering the Tyranids are one of the most devastating things that can happening to life. They even consume the atmosphere of planets.

[STC Logisengine]

As previously mentioned: No. Tyranids are a post M.31 fenomena.

 

In the novel "Pharos" (part of the horus heresy series) an Old One beacon artifact on the planet of Sotha, used by the Ultramarines and loyalist elements of the Iron Warriors legions to "illuminate" Macragge and let ships find their way as the light of the Astronomican is clouded out by the pan-galactic Ruinstorm summoned by Logar (with the help of the Primordial Annihilator) is overloaded during an invasion by the Night Lords Legion and knocked out of order.

 

In the epilouge of that novel it is described how, as they are reached by the massive psycic pulse from the Pharos artifact deep in the intergalactic void, great swarms of hive-fleets change course towards the milkyway galaxy and it is heavily implied they where all going elsewhere initially.

[Beren]

That doesn't mean that they were all heading to the same location, or that individual fleets had not reached the galaxy previously.

[STC Logisengine]

Well, that is true as you can't prove a negative.

 

However, "Pharos" Implies that they did not as if they had the Hivemind would have concidered it a good hunting-ground and already had more ships on the way there, this is not the case in Pharos as the milkyway is described as small and unassuming.

 

Some have pointed to the Kraken of Fenris as of possible tyranid origin, however HH:7 INFERNO, has a 2-page spread pg 76-77 on the nature of the planet Fenris itself and its fauna wich point to the origins being intra-galactic rather than tyrannic.

 

Ofc that could be wrong, however all 40K codex-entries linking Catachan species, kraken and other things with the tyranids are written as in-universe speculation by xenobiologists in the late 40th millennium where the Tyranids are quite a common occurrence so it might not be so odd that those texts are there but to to read them as any type of proof would perhaps be to give them too much credit. :)

[Guest Triszin]

Well, that is true as you can't prove a negative.

 

However, "Pharos" Implies that they did not as if they had the Hivemind would have concidered it a good hunting-ground and already had more ships on the way there, this is not the case in Pharos as the milkyway is described as small and unassuming.

 

Some have pointed to the Kraken of Fenris as of possible tyranid origin, however HH:7 INFERNO, has a 2-page spread pg 76-77 on the nature of the planet Fenris itself and its fauna wich point to the origins being intra-galactic rather than tyrannic.

 

Ofc that could be wrong, however all 40K codex-entries linking Catachan species, kraken and other things with the tyranids are written as in-universe speculation by xenobiologists in the late 40th millennium where the Tyranids are quite a common occurrence so it might not be so odd that those texts are there but to to read them as any type of proof would perhaps be to give them too much credit.

in addition, in wolfsbane, The emperor alludes to Fenris and the things on it being created by humans at the height of the tech

[Beren]

Well, that is true as you can't prove a negative.

 

However, "Pharos" Implies that they did not as if they had the Hivemind would have concidered it a good hunting-ground and already had more ships on the way there, this is not the case in Pharos as the milkyway is described as small and unassuming.

 

Some have pointed to the Kraken of Fenris as of possible tyranid origin, however HH:7 INFERNO, has a 2-page spread pg 76-77 on the nature of the planet Fenris itself and its fauna wich point to the origins being intra-galactic rather than tyrannic.

 

Ofc that could be wrong, however all 40K codex-entries linking Catachan species, kraken and other things with the tyranids are written as in-universe speculation by xenobiologists in the late 40th millennium where the Tyranids are quite a common occurrence so it might not be so odd that those texts are there but to to read them as any type of proof would perhaps be to give them too much credit. :)

 

The good hunting ground argument only applies if there were not better hunting grounds elsewhere. There is also the aforementioned possibility that such swarms are not the Tyranids typical months operandi. Think of it has having several hundred moths in a forest. You don't see much of them, but then someone lights a bonfire and suddenly all the moths are in the same place when there was only one or two there before. In addition, way back there was a GW event where people could design creatures that were explicitly Hive Fleet remnants.

 

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Forgotten_Fleets

[Captain Idaho]

The Galaxy may have encountered scattered individual Hive ships and fleets before, whereas the Pharos drew ALL the Tyranid Hive Fleets within sensory range. Could be that the Tyranids are typically less concentrated than the Milky Way currently has the misfortune of experiencing.

I just really like this theory. Like moths to a flame; the universe scattered with hive ships and fleets and something has drawn them together unified.

[Tyriks]

In the book Devourer, a Necron Cryptek throws a Tyranid swarm into the past to avoid being killed before waking up the tomb. The mosaics on the walls suddenly change to show flesh and blood Necrontyr killing tyranids. Since this pre-dated biotransference, that means at least 60 million years ago. So at least in some ways Tyranids have been present in the Galaxy even before humanity existed. Obviously, this doesn't mean there was a hive fleet invasion, but it's possible to have had isolated pockets of tyranids stranded through time like that evolve to become part of a world's ecosystem.

[Battybattybats]

I'd totally forgotten that bit from Devourer. Great point.

[Trevak Dal]

So when they leave a galaxy, after stripping biomass, minerals, atmosphere and such from all planets asteroids and stars, do they just leave? Surely they would have an endless cycle (in a single galaxy) of eating worlds, because by the time they could eat everything more life would have evolved and come up.

[Tyriks]

Evolution requires living organisms to happen so if they're eating all biomass there's no reason to think new life would spring up behind them.

 

Also if they came from another galaxy in about ten thousand years, they'd be able to travel across a galaxy far too quickly for new life to evolve behind them even if they left some survivors.