the concept of the 40k universe (long)

[hivefleetsyren]

i will say it now. i think far to much and have got very carried away with all this but here it is.I have got this idea om the gw forum. recently a lot of posts have been coming up about the ctan an things like this relating the void dragon to the machine go. which seems feasible reading the necron codex. then also the emperor the hive mind and assorted chaos gods. i think this concept go\'s far further than just the c\'tan and basically concerns all those in the 41st topic. this is deeply confusing but im gonna give it a go *favourite album on, this may take a while*

the c\'tan were star gods created in the beginning of time with the creation of the universe. they spent endless millenia feeding off the energy of stars. they got noticed by the necrontyr that had tradgically short lives due to their stars proximity emitting dangerous radiation. they got this god and some how it possesed a living metal body. the ctan was born and eventually they all became physical like this. they waged a massive war on the old ones. a race of super beings who evolved rapidly with long lives and a massive technological understanding on their side. this made the necrons jealous and the ctan tricked them all into also possesing metal bodies to avoid the ravages of their star. they lost their souls to the ctan and have become undead. only hatred powers their metal body. it was their hatred of those luckier than them that kept them going.

ok so big metal army lead by gods. right now the warp is a mirror image ofthe universe. there can be nothing in the material universe without a counterpart in the warp. peoples bodies inhabbit the material plain when their spirits inhabbit the warp. now the ctan feed on souls from the warp using the physical bridge of the material body that is always connected to its soul. so when the soul shidts from the warp it means that person has no longer got a mirror image so bacally not be alive. the c\'tan do not have a soul. they are gods that thrive of the experience of devouring other souls and have never had the experience of their own soul. so the warp destroys ctan. like looking into a mirror and seeing nothing.

right now the old ones left many warp capable species to combat the necrons. they all have a soul in the warp allowing them to utilise the powers of the warp through that same bridge. mainly because when facing powers from the warp necrons and their star gods are faced with the no reflection thing. it destroys them.

these races. phsychicly capable and created by the old ones. have mainly been destroyed. the eldar and orks remain. now heres another interesting point. tyranids are very warp advanced. they are powered by the hive mind which i like to describe as similair to the internet. theres the soldiers. gaunts and such. they recieve orders over the hive mind like a single computer accessing the internet. it can see the information but contributes nothng. then theres tyrants and warriors. they broaden the hive mind by their existence. they are like servers broadening the capacity of the internet. the norn queens and such are larger versions of these but basically with none of these the hive mind still exists as a concept. it does not physically exist ever. it is a concept and cannot be damaged by the loss of its components. this concept therefore does not exist in the material world although it is supported in the minds of every tyranid. its like the alter ego of the c\'tan existing only in the warp. were the tyranids created by the old ones? the same creator as the eldar?

the other implications of this are. the emperor was a capable psyker. he had a spirit in the warp and a physical body. he cannot have been a god in this sense although that means the hive mind in essence is a god. also who were the old ones. they cannot have been gods. they had considerable phsychic power though not li8ke tyranids, orks or eldar. they had a long life span it was not unlimited. but they created species? they could still be alive in an alternate galaxy. the nids may well not have come from another galaxy because they were running from something or that they had consumed everything. but they were sent by the old ones. every aspect of them seems to help them survive against necrom. they devour worlds and gather strength. necrons destroy all inhabitants of worlds before they slumber below the surface so ths means tyranids avoid those worlds and build their strength. it seems simple to explain chaos and the chaos gods. they seem to just be aspects of 1. \"chaos\" this is similair to the hive mind though it affects only the new races. humans. tau are not warp conneted at all. they seem to be. the star gods answer to the tyranids in essence though this is far more guesswork than anything else. there seems to be no races that do not fight in this 2 way battle. the warp vs the material realm. ive got many more ideas although they are not based in fact but just ideas that would fit the scheme. has this interested any of you or am i just thinking to much again? what are your thoughts? do you think it is a plan by gw that the 40k universe should have turned out like this or was it just a small game that has got blown out of proportion by people with too much free time like me?

[hivefleetsyren]

sorry mods i posted two:blush:

[saustin]

Like that! Stuff that i\'ve been thinkin that someone has bothered to write down! Do you reckon the emperor is actually one of the last old ones? He\'s psychically potent and nigh on immortal, from what I\'ve read that seems to fit the bill. Maybe he forgot what he was one of them and thats why he only worked with men.

[killer cheese]

please post ur therys, ill clean up the double post

[Indra]

Well, I read the post, and I think I followed it well. However, I ought to point out that the Tyranids are seperate from the warp. I cant find it right this second despite a brief flick through of the codex, but I read somewhere that the Tyranids seemed to be a seperate entity from the mirror images found within the warp.

If this is the case then perhaps the warp is not a seperate galaxy, fuelled by its own energy, but a symbiote galaxy fuelled by the psychic species found within the material realm? This might explain the Tyranid seperation from the warp. They generate no alter-ego energy and hence are seperated from the warp. This may also explain the lack of psykers within the Tau forces, as they generate no alter energy they have no psychic powers.

Its a theory that people often miss, but plausible nonetheless, especially if you consider that everyone always says that the Warp is a seperate galaxy, and therefore existable entirely seperately from our material realm, when it is actually inextricably linked to the material realm since it is the material realm that CAUSES it to exist.

Hows that for a theory?

[torn]

the problem with science fiction or fantasy is everyone takes it too seriously.

what you have to remember is writers put things in so the reader knows he/she doesnt know everything, and spends time wondering what that thing is. There are no right or wrong answers, its just the way things have been written. I would bet everything i own sayying there isnt a secret GW datafile with all the answers, because if they made answers the universe would lose its mystique.

[hivefleetsyren]

IndraFurya wrote:

Its a theory that people often miss, but plausible nonetheless, especially if you consider that everyone always says that the Warp is a seperate galaxy, and therefore existable entirely seperately from our material realm, when it is actually inextricably linked to the material realm since it is the material realm that CAUSES it to exist.

Hows that for a theory?

i think as with the tyranids they have one super large consiousness this must inhabit somewhere it doesnt live in the material plain so therefore must be a warp entity/god. this is backed up by the shadow in the warp thing. whenever tyranids have approached psykers feel a huge presence approaching. it scares away daemons in the warp and blocks out the powers of the warp with its imensity. i think basically the hive mind is one great spirit used to give some semblance of life to millions of organisms. also im not sure it really matters.

[torn]

the tyranid hive mind lives in the brains of all the tyranids, particularly the hive node creatures. Im thinking the ones with the bigger brains have more connectivity with each other, but essentially the hive mind is inside tyranid creatures. Maybes the hive ships have the strongest hive mind inside them.

[Gaius Julius]

i agree with torn i highly doubt that the hive mind has manifested in the warp somewhere. The hive mind is a web of consciousness, you can liken it to a very, very advanced network of computers. Each computer is a \'nid organism. The low-tech laptop is a gaunt, and the super computer is a norn queen, but they are all connected.

[hivefleetsyren]

but thats the thing. it is a massive conciousness and im not sure that when you say manifests i think that is a misunderstanding. the warp is not the material plain so physics really doesnt apply. the hive mind doesnt need to manifest it is the spirit if you like of the tyranid race. in that sense it can only be in the hive mind. its just massive because of the sze of the tyranid race. that causes the shadow in the warp. the huge warp born presence.

[Indra]

No, I reckon that the Hive Mind (Shadow included) isnt a part of the warp, and because its all enveloping (The shadow) and it aint a part it cuts off warp links... bringing back the theory that the warp only exists because of the races in the material realm

Shadow envelops planet; Warp cannot penetrate something its not connected to; planet gets cut off; Phenomina Shadow in the Warp occurs.

[torn]

it would be rather unlikely that even if the hive mind was a seperate entity, which it is not, as you can tell from its name hive mind, meaning a collection of minds, would be based in the warp, as tyranids do not even use warp travel. If the did the human race would be screwed.

[hivefleetsyren]

i cant see how it can be a physical entity given that we know everything (excluding necrons and c\'tan) have a reflection in the warp and that reflection is their soul. tyranids hav what seems to be a large single shared soul. its big because individually every nid has its own soul and these kinda mount up given the huge hordes of nids.

[Indra]

Well thats the thing. If you can imagine that the Hive mind would be like a sort of cocoon, within which it is protected from the warp, and thus seperate from it. I think that the warp as I said is basically a symbiote of this material realm, and also vice versa. Without the material realm and its psychic entities creating patchways the warp would become seperate from its fuel source and whither and die.

In essence, take this example. Eldar fall, Slaanesh is born. Slaanesh used the Eldar for fuel, and now that they are almost gone, it turns to other races. Take other gods too. Why would they spend all thier time corrupting the material realm to sustain themselves if it was a seperate galalxy? They rely upon it. But the tyranids are different, they are entirely self sustaining in thier consciousness, and so I do not believe that they have a \'soul\' to speak of, which means that it is not represented in the warp. Again, look to the Tau. Effectively immune to the warp influence as they are not psychic. So CSM might attack them, but how often to demons go there? not very, because I think that as far as daemon food goes, Tau arent very nutritious, but eldar? Another kind of goodness altogether.

Now this post IS a bump, as this thread was too good to let new posters miss.

[Skrall]

ah Indra you do emply. The hive mind isn\'t serperate from the warp, its in a shadow. Minds like the emperor and the hive and strong enough to make a \"shadow\" in the warp in which the mery we pykers and play havoc on each other. The hive mind is more of a mind made from a million minds, like the borg collective. similar mind set up.

Ksab

[Aun O Vader]

That\'s not far wrong Ksab, the Hive Mind is GWs take upon an insect colony. Hundreds, upon thousands of millions of seperate minds all pulling in a single direction. What GW did was introduce a psychic link into this mind and allow it to have all of the minds joined together. The Hive mind is Not an actual existence, it is a direction for all of the creatures that make it up.

In a secnd part, is the Warp a symbiotic galaxy or is it a parasitic galaxy. symbiotes exist by working together, a parasite feeds from a second system that recieves little or no real benefit from the presence of the parasite. The daemons and Chaos Gods, the Enslavers and such like, they all exist to feed from the living creatures of the material realm, but what do material creatures gain from the Warp. Some have learnt to exploit it, but you don\'t have to be psychic to do this, the Tau use Warp Travel. I would argue that the Warp is a parasite living on the belly of the material realm.

The Shadow in the warp would just appear to be an effect on the warp created by the presence of such a powerful collective psychic conciousness. in the same way that all psykers can detect each other, at longer distances for more powerful or familiar minds, the shadow appears to be the effect of an unimaginable powerful psyker.

I always thought that the Old Ones were effectively immortal by the way.

[SkuToV]

Just think of these 2 points:

1. What if the Tyranids had consumed all of the other galaxies in the universe and we were the only ones left...

2. What if the Tyranids were stopping off in our galaxy to stock up when they were running from a race that the tyranids are scared of...

[Indra]

Interesting diversion. Tyranids wouldnt be scared I think, if it was that it would be a base reaction to danger. Fear I think s impossible with a collective. Any takers?

[Skrall]

possible, yes, likely? no. Fear is a reaction, and with creatures largly incapable of fear or even rational thought its gonna take the god emperor himself standing next to the queen of the queens to create fear.


GW, on the incept colony, had one fatal flaw. If it relies upon a collective use of minds then why does the lose of a \"hive-mind creature\" affect it? surely all they do is increase the strenth of the link and not create one.

Then against gaunsts as hive mind creatures is bloody bad, i mean really bad for us marines. Atleast in game terms

Ksab

[Aun O Vader]

Fear as we understand it would be theoretically impossible for any race appart from humans. Even other Terran animals don\'t feal fear in the same way as we do! Tyranids probably wouldn\'t run because theywere scared, but if the Hive Mind is truly sentient then it could have left wherever it was in a self-preservation instinct. Similar to Fear but without the glands!

[SkuToV]

just a couple of really scary ideas

[Indra]

This is turning out to be one of my favourinte threads. Really good ideas here and conversation is flowing well.

Well done everyon so far.

As for fear? I think that as Vader says with nids its a self preservation action. fear as an emotion isnt a factor. Its automatic, like a programmed response to a certain stimuli.

And the parasite idea for the warp? Cant believe I forgot about that concept. FOr me its the answer to alot of questions and scenarios.

[Aun O Vader]

As for fear? I think that as Vader says with nids its a self preservation action. fear as an emotion isnt a factor. Its automatic, like a programmed response to a certain stimuli.



And the parasite idea for the warp? Cant believe I forgot about that concept. FOr me its the answer to alot of questions and scenarios.

What\'s happened to everyone, people keep agreeing with me! Thanks Indra, I spent a while thinking about how best to say all that about the parasite universe idea (although I have to admit I took the term from Terry Pratchett).

Keep putting more ideas up on this thread people, I\'m loving it, and its really making me think about some things that I hadn\'t thought about for a while.

[Drackonis]

I seem to remember it being mentioned somewhere that the Old Ones are the Slann. If this is the case then what it says about the Slann in the Fantasy Lizardmen Army Book could be interesting:

In the Fantasy world the Slann came and made and guided many of the races, I think they had some kind of defence agaisnt chaos and the warp or it just appeared one day.

In either case this would support the Parasite Universe theory. If the material universe and the warp were co-dependent then why would the Slann create a barrier between the two universes, for surely this would stop the material universe from getting the benefit it needed from the warp.
And if the warp just appeared one day then it would have to be a parasite. For the universes to be co-dependent the warp would have been there from the beginning.

Just some thoughts. Ill have to read up on lizardmen to confirm some things.

[Aun O Vader]

You\'re not far wrong Drackonis, in the WFB universe the Slann were the favoured servants of the Old Ones, a mighty race who came to the world, via a giant world gate that they opened over the planett\'s north pole. they created the Slann and the other Lizardman races as their servants and they taught the Elder races (Dwarves and Elves especially!) If any of you have ever read the Silmarillion you\'ll recognise the origins of this story. In the end the Old Ones had to leave because the World Gate became unstable, but they left too late, and the gate collapsed into the North Pole, creating Chaos on the World, which is where the warping power of Chaos comes form in WFB.

The idea in the 40K universe is similar, the Old Ones visited many of the races, bringing them knowledge, but in 40K they encountered the C\'Tan and the Necron\'s who fought against them, so they had to teach the Elder races and their servants (this time the Slann and the orks, including the Brain Boyz) how to fight against the Necrons. the Old Ones were virtually wiped out in the war, and eventually they went into hiding. There are supposed to be some Old Ones left still working against the C\'Tan, but much less openly.

I would say that it has been kind of created so that the WFB world and the 40K universe share a kind of microcosm/macrocosm relationship, where they reflect each other, but through a distorted mirror.

[adders]

In the olden days (rogue trader) I think the slann were in the same position as the oild ones are now in 40k.

So in years gone by the slann were the creators of both universes.

Remember those space slann minis?

http://www.solegends.com/citrt/tsf18spaceslann.htm

[Skrall]

damn... i\'m a modern man... i don\'t speak old folks!!!
a shame, but gw has had a few scisms in its idea and practises. don\'t forget the leman russ miniture was made when he was guard commander made into a space marine.

Now... well no only did he go demi-god but you can\'t be an IG commander turned sm.

Ksab

[hivefleetsyren]

I\'m back! i think the idea is that the nids are in fact a very psychic race. instead of seeing them as many souls roled into one. it helps to think of it as a human body with its mind (not brain, the brain is a wrinkly squelchy thing, the mind is the consciousness, this would be the bit that exists solely in the warp). if you prick your hand with a needle natural reflex is to move your hand away. now you can overide that with your brain if you so wish and force your hand onto the needle. now imagine your finger is no longer attached to you and it is connected to your brain via a psychic bond as a pose to nerves. returning to the nids your finger is a hormogaunt now normally it wouldnt jump on needles but it will if the hivemind forces it to. also a part of the brain is implanted in the leaderbeasts. the brain is connected to the warp by the hive mind. when a synapse creature is destroyed the influence of the mind over the body is weakened. in the same way as a person with a mental disability loses a portion of their control though their mind remains intact. consider that the tyranid race is one body but it is still one mind controlling it. it is a very big body and a huge conciousness forming the mind that controls the body. now when you consider the body is not human but it is an entity that consumes biomatter and recreates it into more body but it is still essentially one body the nervous system replaced with a psychic web. the mind is similarly one entity existing in the warp. in this sense the tyranid race is no different to any single ork. granted the details are different but important in this theory is the fact that just as an ork is smaller than the entire tyranid race. in the same way does the tyranid use a psychic connection between all its components where an ork would use nervous and blood systems. when people say nids arent humanoid its similair to saying the hair on a dogs back isnt humanoid. granted its true the hair is not humanoid but it is only the tiniest of components in a much larger entity that is most definately not humanoid. sorry if i have got carried away but i am really enjoying this post and its small details in the warhammer universe like this that make it so incredibly broad.

[Skrall]

IT HURTS!!!
OWW MY EYES!!

all those words without any spaces and paragraphs hurts. can ya spread it out.

\"ahh amesac\"
HV

[Indra]

welcome back syren.

Alright then, I\'ll buy into that for a second then, about the link to the warp. If thats the case, then I think that maybe we can argue the case that the potency of the hivemind is so great that it can isolate itself from the warp, thus rendering tyranids as parasites of the warp as well as the material realm, drawing energy from the warp whilst remaining immune to the effects of daemons.

This would fit in with the fluff of the uber-predator that they are, dont you think?

[Captain Toenail]

Oh dear. Don\'t you think your taking this a little too seriously...

[Drackonis]

Taking W40K too seriously? Never. I might start a topic on The History of the W40K Universe, I reckon that would be interesting, and mabye easier to compile than theories on Tyranid group consciousness.

[Skrall]

Indra: The immunity comes from the sheer power of the hive mind, much like the emperor it is more than ample at defending itself whilst creating a shadow in which pyker can survive.

\"warpdreams.. damnation\"
HV

[Indra]

Interesting view. Hadn\'t thought of that, I was so concerned with it being altogether seperate... oh look, trees, but where are the woods?

[Skrall]

:p they are avalible at a later date in store. See GW hobby section.

What dya mean btw indra?

\"Big guns win the fight\"
HV

[Aun O Vader]

Interesting view. Hadn\'t thought of that, I was so concerned with it being altogether seperate... oh look, trees, but where are the woods?

I know what you mean Indra, it too easy to get yourself lost in teh weeds on a subject like this. i\'ve always considered that the sheer power of the Hive Mind creates the Shadow, and prevents chaotic incursions. i would imagine that other immensly powerful psykers (magnus the red and big E level not Alpha +) would create a similar presence. I fact, couldn\'t it be argued that the Astronomican is a similar concept, based around a powerful psyker (Big E) and then fueled by thousands of lesser psykers, but instead of creating a shadow in the warp, it creates a beacon.

[Skrall]

Yes, but the \"Big E\" himself creates the shadow. remember he does more than one thing at once, afterall how dya reckon vandirs fleet got caught in the storm of the emperors wrath?

\"Heretics and scum!\"
HV

[hivefleetsyren]

i like going into all this depth. it adds something to the game. and sorry about your eyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees now count the e\'s. hehe soz. anyway.
say the hive mind was only one conciousness just imagine the havoc caused by daemonic possesion. every nid in the universe becomes possesed. that said it would take a massively powered daemon... or god.

[Skrall]

The entire nid rac pulling an eldar. Say hello to Nid\'ernesh the fith chaos god of gluttony.

\"Guard it well\"
HV

[The Dim Reaper]

Yeah but when the Emperor finally kicks it and becomes the 5th God he\'s gonna be mighty pissed that some fat bug just stole his place in Dietyhood...

Cheers,

Dim

[Skrall]

technically he\'s not a chaos god, and the fifth god is either:
Numen; following death of manking
Malal; removed but not forgotten

\"time is endless, but do we end?\"
HV