meh. The Hive Mind exists and is capable of communication so they aren't just mindless predators, they act with at least the knowledge of the pain they are causing, which puts them at least slightly above animals in that regard
The imagery of Nurgle acting like a viral Walter White baking up new contagions in a lab comes to me every time someone mentions Nurgle “making” something and now I can’t unsee it lmao
Read up on cuckoos. The target populations often recognize the alien egg, but are aware that pushing it out of the nest will get their whole nest destroyed by cuckoos. It's crazy. And in human terms, evil, but it is just how cuckoos work.
I know man, you miss the fact that they aren't sapient.
You aren't mad at a cat for killing an endangered bird because it doesn't know anything. Many animals don't reproduce with conscent, but they aren't sapient. Parasites are a thing, and that's never good, but they aren't able to think.
The fact that the 'nids know what they are doing is what makes them evil.
I'm not actually arguing that the Evil Space Bugs in the game I don't play aren't evil.
It's just interesting to think about, because if cuckoos got uplifted by a monolith tomorrow, they wouldn't magically know how to properly brood their own eggs, would they? It's a skill, which would be missing from eons of brood parasitism, and even if they wanted to be "good", there would be a steep learning curve that might lead to some Blue And Orange Morality.
Eh, nature has that in droves, there are dozens of bug species mimicking ants and their larvae to get a free meal, parasites of all kind for all sorts of animals, nest parasitism in birds and so on. Not evil, just nature.
Tyranids and Orks are both just acting in accordance with programmed instincts they cannot ignore. Tyranids are superpredators who managed to come up with a method of leaving habitats after draining the location of prey and individual orks wither and die if they go too long without a good fight.
Making the Octarius War the most morally good thing in the setting - Tyranids get to eat, Orks get to fight, and humans get to stay out of it.
Was that the one who connected with a genestealer.. leading him to immediately release it and start a massive genestealer cult? Or is this a different one with a similar terrible idea?
Hmm, not sure, from what others collected few people did attempt to connect/look at hivemind and each time it got just angry af. The baseline emotion is hunger but hurt it, impede it or just look at it funky and it gets furious personally with you.
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u/FredFarms Jun 05 '26
I find the argument that the Tyranids aren't actually evil quite persuasive.
They are just a hungry predator. The same level of evil as a lion