Idea for a novella, but i need some clarification on lore!

[velkin]

i want to write a novella from the perspective of a "tyranid" so i came up with this..... idea

The hive mind takes devours a world, taking the bio mass back to their fleet. however! some of the biomass is still living and one of the survivors minds is assimilated into the swarm hive mind! 

he talks about the ship, the spawing pools, and the feeling of the tyranid fleet/hivemind. 

they make it to a word to devour, its eldar,chaos,SM ext and starts off as a ripper, dies a few times, his mind is transfered to more rippers until! he kills something significant... then hes a termigant. this cycle repeats and the difficulty becomes higher with every new form.

IN HIS JOURNEYS, and only when he is in a "body" can he communicate with other Tyranid life via the synapse connection to them. meeting of course some allies, and a few rivals in his now home fleet. 

he goes though the grief of his new found life, talks not to much about who he used to be, and goes though the mental struggle of now being transformed from a compassionate form of sentient life to the perfect killing machine. about the insatiable drive to feed. and to protect his "friends". and even his rivals from harm. 

i could probably go on and on but tell me what you think. is this plausible enough. im so sick and tired of reading from an enemys standpoint, the nids are not "evil" they are on their own campaign of plight, running from possibly greater fears, and as this character continues to ask the hive mind questions and get only partial answers till he eventually finds some truth. good bad or indifferent

so what do you guys think, is this completely against the lore? or is this a good way to get first person perspective and create some amazing fluff on the nids. 

and anyone who wants to story board out some stuff in the comments pls do! im a newb but i enjoy writing so i know ill screw up. i just hope its not terrible. 

[Deleted]

I don't think this would fit with what the plurality of what people consider cannon.

I'm not saying don't run with it, but one of the most inherently tyranid features is what's characterized as a complete lack of personality devolving into raw instinct out of the noose of synaptic drive.

Also the idea of something surviving assimilation seems foreign since that would mean he bypassed an entire fleet's ability to detect life when hive fleets strip down even the atmosphere of planets, and tyranids kill themselves at the end of invasions throwing themselves into digestion pools to be sucked up as a biomass soup from hive ships at the end of invasion.

I'm not even sure tyranids could be characterized as "communicating" with eachother in any fashion human beings could understand. While it doesn't say anywhere that lesser beasts have a distinct lack of synaptic presence, when in synapse they're always described as a near extension of the synaptic presence manipulating them. Even feelings like rage felt by tyrant guard at the death of their hive tyrant have been described as a biological mechanism instilled in them as a trigger to boost fleet survival at the loss of a valuable chunk of biomass rather than them truly having a concept of hatred. So grief seems implausible. In my mind you'd almost require some sort of insanely powerful psyker to be the "assimilated" to even entertain the possibility of their mind not having been erased from existence(and nids eat eldar without too much problem fashioning their DNA into beasts of terror like the Doom of Malantai and zoanthropes). And, to me, the idea that the hive mind would answer to one of its lesser creatures anything would be a retcon of what the evolutionary force the tyranids represent. Tyranids aren't an "enemy", they're like a tornado. They don't individually feel purpose, they just ARE, being whipped around by the currents that create them.

Now, if you wanted to write a story characterizing the closest thing tyranids have demonstrated as self-awareness, the swarmlord would be a good jump off point since even when he was written into existence it caused a stink in the fluff community because it flew so in the face of what tyranid players had come to understand as the hive mind. But even that I'd personally have a hard time writing a narrative regarding as more than the way a wasp kills bees. The wasp knows what it wants, food. Tinting it with emotion or feelings to me seems like it'd be writing new fluff. And people do it.

I read a book years ago(like, when I was about 12 compared to my 27 year old self) called "Raptor Red" that follows a bloodthirsty raptor through her life. I remember enjoying the way the author framed how the creature thought as I believed he did a good job not painting human bias onto it, but truthfully it wasn't a very enjoyable book in terms of content. I thought Desert Raiders was a superb story involving the tyranids where while the imperial forces were obviously the primary narrative, the tyranids weren't exactly characterized as "evil"(honestly I struggle to think of any GW writing I've encountered about tyranids that hasn't emphasized their detached nature from concepts of morality- "soulless", "instinct", "endless hunger" are all ideas that come to mind.

While my gut says your idea isn't compatible with tyranid fluff, don't let what anyone(myself included) says about that. If you think you can write a decent story out of it and justify it through whatever rationale, go for it.

[Hive Tyrant Qiln]

I like this idea, and I just thought of something: Psyker.
You know how the fluff behind the Shadow in the Warp is psychic static right?
So what if they overlooked his brain signature because he was such a low power psyker that they didn't detect him.
And the real reason why they keep on upgrading him is to see what he can do with his Warp and Hive Mind psyker powers.
After all, Norn Queens experiment quite a lot, so maybe at the beginning of each chapter you can do something like they did in Ender's Game, with the Norn Queen who birthed him giving status updates on his progression.

[nurglitch]

Personally I discard pretty much all of the official lore on Tyranids and consider them as a form of eusocial alien life, with a life-cycle based on achieving Tyrant-hood to spread one's genes amongst the hives. Yes, my Tyranids occupy planets and farm them, Tyranno-forming the local life-forms with a horrifying combination of flesh-crafting and psychic domination. You start as a Ripper, and gradually progress to Gaunt, to Warrior, to Prime, to Tyrant, with some survivors branching off into sterile specializations requiring invasive flesh-crafting and gene-engineering such as Zoanthropes and so on. Genestealers are still human-tyranid hybrids.

[Hive Tyrant Qiln]

Let us not forget the true menace...GW and their force Ward Marines, Adeptus Lawyerites, and the Crud Regiments of Robin.
Prepare for operation STEAL RAIN!
AKA, GW is always watching and there's some Black Librarian who's being forced to write this right now.

[velkin]

So from what i gather, mixed emotions. I just feel more books for the emperor are white noise & its time to get an aliens perspective on things! i do however fear the "Adeptus Lawyerites" hmmmm

[Deleted]

Elaborating on this concept(with my own ideas and biases), I think a cool idea would be something like giving sentience not to a single tyranid organism, but lets say a new "strain".

This isn't anywhere close to how real genetics work, but lets say hypothetically tyranid genotype's have like a DNA signature that's sentient and understands/has feelings on it's progress being propagated through the hive fleet's DNA pool. Take it to a fundamental level where in the digestive goulash different strains literally fight eachother to be the most dominant evolution.

So to give a tyranid follow the individual perspective- you could start with the assimilation/creation of an entirely new being. It doesn't think of itself as it's former life, but understands the forces that spawned it and understands it's origins. After a trial from the hive mind in battle, more of it gets spawned and it ceases to become an individual but a mini-collective of multiple identical strain genetic organisms sort of like a computer network vying for supremacy in a larger network.

You could write the story to lead to either the genotype achieving superiority in the hive fleets as being the best at it's niche, being terribly destroyed after failing as an experiment, or even having a long run of success and then flipping the perspective to being the genetic strain gradually being replaced by a fiercer strain.

Just spitballing though. I think that'd be a cool way to characterize tyranid "identity".

[kazetanade]

Can a dog have feelings? Yes.

Are Tyranid creatuers with brains? Yes.

Can they simulate instinct based on primordial instinct? Yes.

Can they hence have sentenience? Yes.

Keep in mind that Synapse influence is much like psychic suggestion or a form of mental possession, with the Synapse creature forcing their will on lesser beings. It is a weaponized communications network in which the command nodes send commands to the rest of the subservient nodes, who are forced to accept the perogative.

I like the idea of a human sentience, perhaps through sheer force of will, being able to hold itself together in the great maelstrom that would be the Hive Mind Consciousness, and hence explore it, but the digestion pool would not be how he gets in, nor would he be aware of his role - or even if he is, he would be a small part of the consciousness and wouldnt be so aware of what's happening. Not until he becomes a major part of the psyche of a Warrior at the very least.

On the other hand, Nidsinrva has a really interesting idea here of the genetic strains which are vying for existance. I personally feel that this would be even harder to write though, due to the main character being essentially... not an entity but a concept. It's very hard to relate back to that as a writer and as a reader.

Lastly, higher function Nids are extremely intelligent. They can feel fear, self-preservation, by extension, they can also feel the other spectrum of emotions. It just may not matter to them in the long run, but a book from the PoV of the Norn Queen could be something there. Each Norn Queen is pretty much the alpha and omega of their Hive Fleet, and there is no Synapse which is bigger than the Norn Queen, which dominates the Synapse of the entire fleet, and is through that Queen connected to the greater Hive Mind. I would have to say a Norn Queen has to have some outstanding power of will and self-awareness to control so much WHILE floating in the sea of consciousness.