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A vast and alien intellect has risen from the void of intergalatic space. the single monstrous entity which is the Tyranid race has found a new, rich feeding ground: the human galaxy. Driven by the single consciousness of the hive mind, the Tyranids consume every living thing in their path.
The bio-engineered warriors of the hive mind overrun world after world, each generation becoming better adapted to hunting their prey. The galaxy is dommed to become a barren lifeless wasteland if the Tyranids cannot be stopped.
Tyranid Broods
Hive Tyrant
The Hive Tyrant is a large and massively powerful creature. It resembles a Tyranid Warrior in a similar way that the Genestealer Patriarch is a larger and more powerful Genestealer, though whether they were deliberately created this way or have evolved to a higher form is uncertain. Like all Tyranids, they seem able to mutate rapidly, and several different physical characteristics have been reported.
The Hive Tyrant is highly psychic, and its relationship to the hive mind is closer than even that of the Tyranid Warriors. Little is known for certain about the complex relationships between these creatures, but some of the Imperial Techno-Magi believe the Hive Tyrants are the consort-minds of the hive queen that forms the repository of the hive fleet's own collective consciousness. If this is true, the Hive Tyrants embody the hive mind completely, but their destruction does not diminish it in any way.
Carnifex
The Carnifex is known as the Screamer Killer by warriors of the Imperium because of the high-pitched scream it makes as it rushes forward, scything its razor-edged killing arms. Its massive, rounded body is extremely tough, having a chitinous hide which protects it from damage and a shape that allows it to withstand tremendous pressures.
A Carnifex is a living engine of destruction evolved for use in shock assaults, space ship boarding actions and massed battles where it can smash through almost any obstacle, whether it is a defensive line enemy tanks or a fortified position. The assault of these creatures is terrifying to behold: a primaeval and irresistible force which smashes men and vehicles aside like childrens' toys. Carnifexes are armed with four great sickle-shaped claws of diamond hard chitin, bone and cartilage. The combined assault of these mighty scythes is powerful enough to rip through even armourplas and ceramite with ease.
Carnifexes also have the capacity to energise a form of bio-plasma in their gut via rasping plates in their oesophagus, the source of their high-pitched scream. An electrical field around the claws holds the incandescent plasma ball until it is launched at its target.
Tyranid Warriors
The Tyranid hive fleets consist of millions of spacecraft, each home to billions of creatures: untold thousands of monstrosities evolved from the bubbling geno-organs of the ship's reproductive chamber. All of these creatures are born to serve the single entity that is the ship, and the ship itself exists only as part of the entity that is the fleet.
All Tyranid creatures are held in a common psychic bond that enables them to act together as one social organism. Individual Tyranids have no distinct minds like humans and other creatures. A Tyranid simply fulfils the functions assigned to it by the greater hive mind or overmind. The smaller mindless creatures are unthinking and instinctive, but larger more complex creatures can make decisions appropriate to them.
The Tyranid Warriors are amongst the most important Tyranids. Not only are they large and powerful fighters in their own right but they also fulfil a pivotal role in the Tyranid armies. They act as psychic resonators, amplifying the psychic bond of the hive mind and transmitting its power to the smaller, less receptive creatures around them. When the Tyranids begin to swarm the Tyranid Warriors become the focal points of the hive mind. Like officers marshalling their armies, the Tyranid Warriors lead the lesser creatures into battle, directing their troops to the appointed stations in the greater plan.
Lictor
Lictors rove ahead of Tyranid ground swarms seeking out pockets of enemy resistance to be eradicated and native life forms to be absorbed. Lictors are often referred to by Imperial troops as Spooks or Mantis Stalkers because of their unnerving behavioural patterns and combat techniques. Lictors are intelligent and possess highly developed sensory organs so they can see, smell, hear, and taste their prey long before it becomes aware of their presence. They appear to be a specialist mutation of Tyranid Warriors and are highly adapted to survival in hostile environments and a stalker/predator role.
Stalking Lictors exude a pheromone trail which draws other Tyranid creatures in their wake. A larger concentration of prey stimulates a stronger pheromone response and brings a larger group of trailing Tyranids. Lictors are well equipped for dealing death with a whole arsenal of bio-weaponry which includes mantis-like upper claws, venomous talons, feeder tentacles and barbed flesh hooks.
The Lictor's feeder tentacles are tipped with sharpened bony plates and are used to lobotomize victims so that the Lictor can absorb their genptic data and immediate memories by consuming their brains. The exceptionally powerful upper claws are edged with fractal chitin and the lower talons have venom channels containing a deadly haemotoxin. The flesh hooks are the most unusual of the Lictor's weapons. They are formed out of carbon-based chitin with a monomolecular edge and are attached to lengths of exceptionally tough muscle fibre situated between the ribs. The hooks are tired by a sharp intercostal muscle spasm and allow Lictors to snare victims from a distance. The flesh hooks are also sometimes used as grapnels, allowing Lictors to scale vertical surfaces at great speed.
Lictors are covered with tiny chameleonic scales which shift their colour and texture to match the creature's surroundings. These make Lictors exceedingly difficult to spot except at very close range. The Lictor's body gives off little heat and it is capable of remaining completely motionless for days if necessary so even energy and motion detection devices are often baffled by the Lictor's exceptional stealth.
Zoanthrope
Zoanthropes are perhaps the strangest of the mutant strains of Tyranid Warrior seen amongst the swarms. Though they are considerably larger than Tyranid Warriors their bodies are fragile and have feeble, atrophied limbs, and their heads are so huge and bloated that they look too large for their frail bodies to support.
Zoanthropes appear to have been engineered to exploit the maximum psychic potential of Tyranid Warriors and even seem to use psychic energy to invigorate their wasted bodies. Zoanthropes, for all their seeming physical weakness, are lethal creatures. They use their psychic powers both to defend themselves and to attack their opponents with ravening bolts of warp energy. Though they are highly intelligent Zoanthropes have become sedentary through their evolution so unless they are carefully controlled by the hive mind they will halt to conserve their psychic energy.
Genestealers
Genestealers have a long history in the Warhammer universe. They in fact predate Chaos in the WH40K universe.
They, at first, were thought to be native to this galaxy and were not related to the Trynid Hive Fleets. Later this was shown to be not correct, and that they were in fact part of the Trynid invasion forces, with a given cult taking over a planet several years, some times decades or centuries before the hive fleet would drop out of the Warp "for a light lunch" as it were.
Genestealers attempt to take over a planet by forming "Cults" formed of the siblings of the hybrid Genestealers. At times the hive mind is to far away to give strength to the leaders of the cults. In these cases the cults may turn to the Chaos Gods for strength.
Termagaunt
Although smaller in size than many other Tyranids, the Termagant is agile, fast, cunning and deadly. It is commonly called a Hunter-Slayer by the troops of the Imperial Guard. The Termagant's powerful body swoops low to the ground for speed, and enables it to follow the narrow arterial passages of the hive ships. Like Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers it has six limbs and a chitinous outer shell which glistens with sticky secretion .
The Termagant is most commonly armed with a symbiote--weapon human warriors call the Fleshborer. This strange weapon creature spits a grub-like nodule which hurls itself upon its target, manic jaws whirling and biting like an animated apple corer. Its entire life energy is expended in a few brief seconds of destruction.
More recent reports have indicated an increasingly varied selection of symbiote weapons being used by Termagants. These new symbiotes include creatures that project a constricting web of filaments or fire razor-edged bony spikes at high velocity.
Ripper Swarms
As the Tyranids overrun the defences of a planet they rapidly assimilate the genetic imprint and bio-mass of every living thing on that world. Once all resistance has been eliminated the world is stripped down to bare rock then all of its moisture, atmosphere and nutrients are absorbed by the hive fleet. In the initial phases of this process millions of voracious Tyranid organisms are released all over the planet. They move across its surface multiplying and consuming everything in their path, leaving an empty and desolate wasteland behind them. Eventually these organisms are reabsorbed by the hive mind and re-evolved to perform different functions, depending on the genetic imprints they have absorbed.
These organisms are extremely varied but amongst the most common are those known to the Imperial forces as Rippers. Rippers have serpentine bodies around half a metre in length which terminate in a broad head. The head portion is split by a broad maw full of row upon row of exceedingly sharp ripping hooks and razor edged bony ridges which it uses to slice and tear organic matter. Rippers are energetic and persistent so they are quite capable of pulling down creatures many times their own size. Huge swarms of Rippers are often seen on the battlefield, advancing at the heels of Tyranid assault forces.
Gargoyles
Gargoyles are vicious winged monsters that are often the first parts of the Tyranid swarms seen in battle. They range ahead of the swarm either flying in broods or clinging to the bellies of the great Harridan brood mothers as they flap ponderously through the skies. Their primary purpose seems to be seeking out the enemy and sowing terror and confusion amongst them. Thus fire and the flap of the Gargoyles' membranous wings precede the Tyranid hordes, driving the enemy out into the open to be absorbed by the swarm.
Gargoyles physically resemble Termagants in many aspects such as body mass, cranial capacity and the configuration of their medial armour plates. This makes it likely that either they are both are evolved from a single creature or the Gargoyles were derived from the Termagants' DNA template. Gargoyles have wide leathery wings, raking claws and barbed tails. Though they have six limbs the lower pair have atrophied to little more than stumps. Their jaws have been adapted by a symbiotic creature so that they can squirt flaming bile at a considerable distance. This flame spurt is used to set fires and burn the enemy out of defensive positions.
There is some speculation as to whether Gargoyles fulfil a specific role on the hive ships - it has been postulated that their purpose is to destroy cancerous growths in the ship with burning fluid and patch wounds with their broad pinions. It is more likely that they flock together in lofty chambers deep in the bowels of the ship and hibernate like Tyranid Warriors. Gargoyles seem so well adapted to bringing terror and death it is hard to imagine them doing anything else.
Hormagaunts
Great swarms of Hormagaunts are employed in wave attacks against the enemy in battle, often being used to exhaust the defenders before the main attack is launched. Hormagaunts are extraordinarily single-minded in their purpose of closing with their foe and eviscerating them with their scythe-like claws, bounding forward regardless of pain or injury. They are very fast and seemingly indefatigable, constantly moving in restless swarms which seem to be made of nothing but rippling claws and ridged plates.
Hormagaunts appear to be another genetic manipulation of the Termagant genus. This bio-form is more upright with the two sets of upper limbs equipped with well-developed claws for ripping and piercing. The lower legs are long and powerful, tucking up beneath the body when the creature is at rest but flicking out to drive it forward in a series of bounding leaps as it attacks.
The Hormagaunt has a simple digestive tract and sustains itself by draining body fluids from its victims. It stops only briefly to feed, however, as its highly active metabolism constrains it to constantly seek out and attack fresh victims.
Biovore & Spore Mines
In land battles, spore mines are usually vomited from the maw of a genetically adapted war-beast referred to by the Magos Biologis as the Biovore. This creature nurtures a clutch of spore mines inside its body until they are required, at which point they are launched one at a time by powerful muscle spasm from a dorsal aperture. As the spore mine is flung through the air its internal gas bladder inflates and it floats down towards ground level, eventually hanging at a height of around two to five metres and starting to drift.
Other than its ability to launch spore mines the Biovore is sedentary and almost defenceless in comparison to other Tyranid creatures. Imperial sources point out that the Biovore has only appeared relatively recently in actions fought against hive fleet Kraken. It is postulated that this creature represents the first Tyranid emulation of more conventional field artillery such as the Tarantula or the Rapier laser destroyer.
In space combat the Tyranid hive fleets make extensive use of thousands of huge, floating pod-like spores to protect the mother ships of the swarm or seed planetary systems before their approach. These drifting pods are deadly mines which move in an apparently random fashion until their detonation is triggered by the proximity of a non-Tyranid object. Their explosive power is extraordinary, prompting speculation that they utilise a thermonuclear reaction, and they inflict considerable damage not only from the resultant shockwave but from the impact of shell fragments hundreds of feet across. These "spore mines" also discharge an accompanying shower of virulent viruses, acids, and infectious parasites when they detonate, causing extensive secondary damage to their targets.
Spore mines are spherical and have an internal gas bladder which allows them to float freely in the atmosphere. Sensitive trigger tendrils that detect scent, vibration and other stimuli dangle from their lower half. Their outer surface is composed of a dense carapace which is deeply scored to make it shatter into jagged fragments. The acids, viruses and other secondary infectious vectors are stored in pockets within the chitin surface so that they are scattered when it explodes. The rest of the spore mine is taken up with cells containing a cocktail of explosive chemicals which detonate when they intermingle.
Tyranid forces fighting on planetary surfaces also utilise a smaller version of the space-going spore mine. These cause tremendous disruption and damage as they drift through the defenders' positions, often forcing them to abandon the area altogether in order to avoid their imminent destruction. Spore mines are either released and allowed to drift on prevailing air currents or they are launched directly into the target area by a specialised Tyranid creature known as a Biovore.