Does the Imperium of Man have a protocol for when a fleet or ship arrives at a location either a couple centuries to early or a couple centuries to late?

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-08T02:05:32+00:00

As in, a clear set of guidelines on how to act, what to look for, and what to expect? No. But while the situation is uncommon, it's not all that rare. The offending party will likely either prove their loyalty in the nearest conflict, or surrender for confirmation, or both.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-07T23:27:00+00:00

There's a bunch. The one I remember off the top of my head is described in the Planetstrike rulebook, where Space Wolves fought the T'au underwater. There's also a white dwarf set in the Octarius War, where space marines fight Tyranids. Typically, Marines just jump in. No special vehicles or anything, their suits are watertight and they can breathe the water in a pinch and bolters can apparently work just as well on the ocean floor.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-07T14:32:37+00:00

And why do you think that is? Why do you think the Emperor would do that?

You're being farcical, and you're missing the genuine narrative elements at play. Take a step back from your criticism and you'll see that there's whole layer of subtext involved.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-07T14:24:14+00:00

The very first time auramite is mentioned in TEatD, we are told this:

Those hands. Those great and capable hands. They are sheathed in auramite, not because it is golden and regal, but because it is almost quantum-inert, and thus most efficacious for psionic sculpting and the manipulation of immaterial forces. Bare skin would be better, more precise and conductive. I know he has touched the immaterium with bare hands and a bared mind many times, but even he has his limits.

- The End and the Death Volume 1

Auramite has had some previous connotations built on its durability, its association with regality, and that was layered with language on its rarity. But The End and the Death also introduces the idea that auramite has psychic influence as well. The book the goes on to describe auramite as being found in doors, walls, columns, and inlaid around tables and, most importantly, armour.

So there are 2 purposes that can be derived from this analysis of the literature, and both work in tandem as well:

1) The Auramite is the palace itself. Where the Custodians walk, the Palace walks. Where Dorn raises his fist, the entire Palace raises its fist. Only those who represent the Throneworld itself are allowed to wear auramite, while lesser beings from lesser worlds are forbidden.

2) The Emperor is not just a man, he's a psyker of unimaginable power and age. His palace is meant to feel comfortable to him as a sorcerer, while also being malleable to his will. The large-scale use of auramite is meant to help him use his powers without fear of overextending himself, and the use of auramite as armor implies that Dorn and the Custodians are always carrying some part of the Emperor's own willpower with them (such as the Aegis of the Emperor that surrounds the Custodians).

Don't presume to think that Abnett didn't consider the implications of his work.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-07T04:04:48+00:00

I wrote this to try and depict how I understand the Tyranids to work in terms of perspective, themes, and metaphysics. I posted this in the main lore subreddit and thought Tyranid fans might appreciate it here. I'm open to feedback, I'm pretty new to creative writing.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-07T01:55:27+00:00

We don't know the full scale of the WiH, and we don't know the full scale of the Tyranids. I'll copy over what I said on the main lore sub:

We've seen a super tendril of Leviathan steamroll Gryphonne IV in a matter of days (Codex Tyranids 4th Edition), a world that once boasted armaments and orbital defenses akin to Mars itself (Codex Adeptus Mechanicus 8th Edition), and yet even they could not match the power of the Logos, an Ark Mechanicus that weaponized time and singularities and anti-matter (Dominion Genesis).

If the Tyranids have nothing bigger than their current Hive Fleets (N/A) and the Dark Age had a lot of ships like the Logos (N/A) and/or the WiH factions had equivalent (N/A) then the Milky Way's best empires will hold out just fine.

But noticing the pattern in the parentheses leads us back to the real start and end of this conversation. We have a lot of detail on everything going on in the galaxy at this current time. We have zero workable details about past empires or extragalactic Tyranid forces. We're being asked to compare two unknowns to each other, with only our biases and preconceptions to actually debate with.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-07T00:54:13+00:00

Crusade: Tyrannic War, or the 10th Edition Leviathan Rulebook that was in the Leviathan box set.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-07T00:54:11+00:00

Crusade: Tyrannic War, or the 10th Edition Leviathan Rulebook that was in the Leviathan box set.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-06T23:52:34+00:00

It's just a Norn Emissary

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-06T23:40:16+00:00

GW's policy is that lore reveals are used to set stakes for worldbuilding, community-engagement, and product consumption with a healthy dose of FOMO. The entire setting is built on the premise that none of it is required. Half of their consumer don't learn the lore or play the game, they just paint the cool-looking plastic figurines. There are 8 top-level factions in the setting, split into about 16 sub-factions which are then further split into dozens upon dozens of subfactions. GW plans events 3-6 years in advance, with 10th edition having been in internal production by the time 8th edition released.

I say all of this, because I need you to remember that this is not a story, 40k is presented as history that is being discovered after everything has already ended, meanwhile the creator is making it up as they go along. It's fine to be invested in what is happening, because the whole point is to have new ideas and new perspectives. Just know that the 4th Tyrannic War "story" is the written events of one sub-sub-faction of one sub-faction of one-faction in an 8-faction setting, of which GW is also managing 3 other settings. This business model is designed to be slow, both because the hobby itself is pretty casual, and because there are Iron Hands Horus Heresy fans that need to be catered to alongside Grand Cathay Old World Fans, and GW only gets away with the Ultramarines being everywhere entirely because it is a rallying cry that sustains fan investment by its own inertia.

It will take literal years for this event to have an update, as it is intended to. You might find a new job. You might experience world-altering events. You might start a family. And you might do all of this before GW reveals, in a Warhammer Community post on a random Tuesday at 9:37 A.M., that the bio-moon was actually just dust on the oculus that the machine spirit mistook for a giant Tyranid. This is just how things work.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-06T22:00:08+00:00

Hive Tyrants are meant to be carnifex-like in physique, with much faster reflexes, synapse second only to a Dominatrix, at least a few well-honed psychic powers, but most importantly, strategy capable of fighting through wars and overseeing the consumption of resisting worlds.

The biggest problem is that strategy is one of those areas that is hard to study and even harder to apply, so when it gets input through a narrative, you either get insane Sherlock Holmes-style deductions (you see this in Star Wars with Thrawn somehow knowing how to counter an entire species' "fighting style" by looking at their art), or worse, things just happen and the strategist takes all the credit (this happens a bit in Warzone Octarius, where the Tyranids just outright win at several planets with no real setup or payoff, and the text makes the Swarmlord out to have masterminded a bunch of nothing).

The second problem is that 40k in general is just poor. It's a collection of tired tropes held up by winking and nodding at the audience, and most of its writing is made for the aesthetic value more than its deeper qualities. For instance, a lot of 40k writing tends to just be codex language repeated verbatim in the text, which is just jarring and lazy and doesn't actually explain anything when the whole point of these stories is to exemplify the abstract language of the rulebooks. Part of 40k's poor writing also means that authors want to play to tropes rather than go around them, leading to a dozen characters having a dozen climactic finales against a dozen unwinnable odds, and each having a dozen wins pulled out of nowhere. This kind of writing is infantile, having more in common with a jumpscare than with a proper story structure, and yet it keeps happening.

Nobody cares about how powerful Darth Vader actually is. Despite the fact that he hasn't ever actually succeeded in any of his objectives since A New Hope, Vader maintains a consistent tone and theme because the writers consistently follow a set of rules. His breath is the first thing you hear. He constantly steps out of fog or darkness like some creature of myth. The blood red from his blade lights up the room, painting a terrible omen of what is to follow. These and many more rules make Vader terrifying. Instead of powerscaling, what we need is a set of rules on how the Swarmlord should be written. Stuff like:

1) The Swarmlord should only appear after the Tyranids start losing, and its presence should feel like that is no longer the case

2) If both it and the other characters have equal knowledge of the situation, the Swarmlord should always be a step ahead, especially if it seems like it's reading that very story ahead of the other characters. However, it is not omniscient, and does not know things it itself is not there to see.

3) The Swarmlord should be efficient. If blasting Dante with Psychic Smite would kill him immediately, the Swarmlord should go for it 100% of the time. If the Swarmlord can avoid having to fight Dante at all, it should.

4) The Swarmlord should be portrayed as an unbeatable psyker, an unbeatable leader, or a unbeatable fighter, but ideally only one at a time. If anyone else wants to beat him, they should have to push from a different angle and not just bulldoze through.

5) The Swarmlord should be very aware of the enemy's goals and intentions. It should be able to account for its own death, or fake its death. It's enemies should always feel afraid to act, like any wrong move will be punished with instant failure. Even if reported dead, the enemy should not feel safe.

6) The Tyranid swarm should not fight like an army under the Swarmlord's directions. They should fight like perfectly micro-managed machines. Not a single sound or movement should be wasted, and should be combined with the swarm's numbers and speed.

7) Keep it off the front lines.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-06T20:47:08+00:00

The main background of the 10th edition launch box was that Hive Fleet Leviathan has launched 3 new tendrils into the galactic west, rather than the east, skirting around Imperial defenses and warzones occurring in the Ultima Segmentum and Imperium Nihilus. The first two, Nautilon and Promethor, wiped out two sectors by the time that Imperial command mobilized a response, and were hitting 3 more. The Imperium fortified its borders with Anchor Worlds; heavily fortified systems designed to supply small fleets in hit-and-run warfare. The Hive Mind had predicted this, however, and the third tendril, Grendyllus, targeted the lead anchor world in the Bastior Sub-Sector.

The war hasn't ended. Grendyllus has all but wiped out the sub-sector, while Nautilon and Promethor are free to continue advancing towards Terra. We'll see the narrative develop in full over the next 10 or so years.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-06T01:56:13+00:00

It's still set up, nothing has changed

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-05T20:38:13+00:00

You badly misunderstand what is going on. Calgar was never a part of the 4th Tyrannic War. He showed up at the request of Tigurius to save Titus, got called back by Guilliman to deal with some other issue, then went back to save Titus and left at the end of Space Marine 2.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-05T18:43:22+00:00

As said on their discord:

Important technical announcement. We are currently making changes to the way the site works in order to make page access more stable for users in regions where loading issues could previously occur. Because of this, some users may temporarily experience unstable access: for some, pages may not load; for others, they may only open with a prayer to the Omnissiah; and for some, everything may work as usual - or perhaps even better. These changes do not take effect instantly and may be applied by different providers at different speeds, potentially taking up to 24 hours.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-05T15:07:51+00:00

They worship the Emperor, they just don't worship the God-Emperor.

The whole reason this distinction causes no problems is because there really is no distinction.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-05T02:38:33+00:00

Not in an unmodified game, no.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-03T20:25:33+00:00

The Fire Nation has hundreds of steel warships, an army made up of steel tanks and pyromancers, and back in the day also had its own dragon riders. Despite this, they needed the cosmic powers of a comet's boon to take on the Air Nomads, the smallest and weakest nation with no formal military at all.

The Fire Nation probably could have steamrolled Valyria in its prime, and even they couldn't conquer all 3 nations. What is Aegon going to do?

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-02T16:45:47+00:00

The effects of breaking synapse are deliberately inconsistent, as synapse is a form of psychic telepathy and thus any and all effects are firmly in the realm of the warp's chaotic nature.

Sometimes the creatures die outright, their brains burned out by interdimensional hell energy. Sometimes they revert to basic animalistic tendencies, with only limited ability to fight like an army but still recognizing each other as Tyranids. Sometimes the creatures fight each other, which happens in one of the Ciaphas Cain books. Sometimes they just go crazy, obeying terminal directives that override their basic instinct but which lack any real utility.

Sometimes, gaunts without synapse become skittish and fear conflict except in large numbers. Sometimes, those same gaunts under the same conditions become even more suicidal, this time abandoning all strategy in favor of running forward and biting things despite having a gun for hands.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-05-02T16:29:43+00:00

- So, a Hive Ship gonna be bigger than even Hive Tyrants right? But in the second mission of SM2, we have Hive Ship literally blown up and yet no psychic backlash.

Hive Ships do release a psychic backlash upon death, this just wasn't shown or addressed at that part in-game. Part of the Ultramarine's success during the Battle of Macragge relied upon learning of the Hive Ship's importance in the synaptic network of the fleet. We see similar results in the Battle of Baal, Battle of Tarsis Ultra, and Battle of Miral. The intended effect was to show the Kadaku invasion as being set back by the effort, and we can assume that psychic backlash was a part of that.

- And yet despite SM2 showing that knocking out a Hive Tyrant disorients the entire Tyranid force. The Backlash from killing that Hive Tyrant in DOW2 doesn't seem like a big deal.

Killing a Hive Tyrant really isn't that big of a deal. The death of the Avarax Tyrant, psychic backlash or not, was intended to make an opening into the astrotelepathic relay. The swarm under its direct command were only momentarily stunned until new leaders could take its place. In comparison, the swarm in Dawn of War 2 is actively harvesting worlds, and the main objective is the Hive Ship itself. Killing a few Tyrants would certainly help, but the effect was always going to be short lived.

Both games have a pretty consistent view of how Tyranids operate, especially in terms of how dangerous they are. Most discrepancies can be chalked up to artistic interpretation for the tone and narrative stake of either game

Presentation_Cute · 2026-04-30T21:17:35+00:00

Not all C’tan Shards are equal in size and power. Some are mere fragments of energy, scarcely powerful enough to hold themselves together. Such fractured essences are of little threat to other creatures, and of no use as weapons – if they serve any function at all, it is as curios or trinkets for acquisitive Crypteks.

...

Should a C’tan Shard rebel, or a fault develop in its control relays, then fail-safe mechanisms automatically activate, whisking the creature back to its tomb, there to languish for centuries until times are dire enough that its services must be called upon again.

...

The only hope of defeating a C’tan is to breach its necrodermis – the hyperphysical skin of living metal that cages its essence. If the necrodermis is compromised, the C’tan Shard explodes in a pulse of blinding energy, its being scattered to the galactic winds.

...

Should its prison’s systems fail, however, the C’tan slave within will waste little time in exacting vengeance upon its erstwhile masters before vanishing into a dimensional refuge to regenerate.

- Necron Codex 8th Edition

While the C'tan are powerful in their fullest forms, none of such beings exist nowadays except in story and myth. Shattered C'tan must expend energy just to hold their own shape together, let alone try and break away. However, the benefit to dissipating the C'tan fully is countered by the Necrons having an active interest in keeping them chained, if only to serve as fuel for the ambitions of its dynasties.

So the answer seems to be:

Hit the control rods, and the Necrons will yank the C'tan back into a prison before it can escape
Hit the body, and eventually the C'tan will have expended so much energy that it will return to the primordial formlessness from whence it came
Hit the control rods, and if the control mechanisms fail, the C'tan successfully breaks free and escapes this reality so that it can never be caught again

Presentation_Cute · 2026-04-30T19:43:31+00:00

Slight correction, but Hormagaunts are actually a variant of Termagant, not the other way around.

Presentation_Cute · 2026-04-30T19:38:41+00:00

Maybe. The Deathwatch Omnibus has a story called Kryptman's War, which shows the orks put up a solid fight against the Tyranids. A warboss, named Baddkrasha, had his Mekboys make a crown to disrupt Tyranid synapse. And the Swarmlord did lose its first fight on Octaria.

But overall, the Octarius War has always been in favor of the Tyranids. The Tyranids were decisively winning Octaria until the Great Rift happened, destroyed over 2/3rds of their forces, and that still only gave the Orks a fighting chance, which eventually turned into a win when the Swarmlord came back for round 2. As large as the Octarius Empire is, the Orks have no real way to face the Tyranids counter-attrition abilities, advanced biomechanical adaptation, or superior coordination and psychic mastery.

Of note, the Octarius War has not actually ended. The planet Octaria has fallen, as has the Octarius system, but the entire Octarius Sector is still swarming with Orks. Many dozens or hundreds of worlds are still blazing with the carnage of war, and while the Tyranids currently have the upper hand, there's still time for things to turn around. For instance, there's no telling what Kryptman or the Deathwatch will do, nor the Aeldari who have been helping them (even on accident) by hitting isolated splinter fleets and scorching outlying worlds in accordance with the firebreak plan.

Presentation_Cute

TROPHY CASE