Chapter 2 (Reasonable)
The hive fleet was now so huge that it had more individual highly psychic tyranids than all of the individual sentient creatures native to the entire galaxy, and this combined psychic might had huge impacts in the warp. The gods of the warp are gestalt entities formed by the combined emotions of all the soul imbued creatures in the galaxy, and now the vast majority of the soul imbued creatures in the galaxy were the tyranids of hive fleet reasonable alone. The hive mind had observed the local warp and had identified the creatures who dwelled there and learned their names and natures.
As one the hive mind compelled all of the creatures in its collective to think and feel the same things at exactly the same time.
"It is an unquestionable fact that Khorne is a Tyranid god who serves the hive mind of hive fleet reasonable. It is an unquestionable fact that Tzeentch is a tyranid god who serves the hive mind of hive fleet reasonable. It is an unquestionable fact that Nurgle and Slaanesh are Tyranid gods who serve the hive mind of hive fleet reasonable. It is an unquestionable fact that all gods and all daemons serve the hive mind of hive fleet reasonable."
Over and over again the impossibly large multitude of tyranid brains thought these thoughts, not only thought but BELIEVED these thoughts with unthinking faith and obedience to their hive mind. The entire warp quaked with this overwhelming combined belief and the warp had no choice but to react to these thoughts, shaped by the super majority of brains in the galaxy thinking exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.
Not only did they think words and believe, they also felt the emotions associated with each god, strengthening them enormously and growing them hugely into these new shapes that the Tyranids imposed upon them with their beliefs and thoughts. The chaos gods immediately began to change, losing their humanoid appearance and characters, mutating and changing into vast six limbed Tyranid warp gods of immense power, all bound to the absolute will of the hive mind.
The gods bowed in worship of the hive mind that controlled the supermajority of the brains in the galaxy that sustained them, and the hive mind issued commands.
The first thing demanded of the gods was knowledge of the galaxy and everything in it, the full knowledge of Tzeentch in particular, granting it unprecedented situational awareness of the entire galaxy. The hive fleet now knew everything the gods knew, which was a LOT of information indeed.
Armed with knowledge the hive fleet now knew the location of all the planets and all the biomass in the galaxy, as well as the nature and character of all the creatures that lived therein. They saw who was selfish and who was altruistic, who could be of value and who was only destructive.
Hive fleet reasonable, being reasonable, understood that you can get a lot more new genetic information if you let life keep evolving rather than just exterminating entire planets in one go. The tyranids were always interested in discovering new genes and new proteins and other biological information to help them better genetically engineer themselves, and that meant that they wanted to obtain as many new genes as possible. They didn't need to eat ALL of a creature to get a DNA sample, and if they let the creatures go on living then they could gradually evolve new genes that the tyranids could also harvest.
The hive fleet formulated a plan and began to very discretely and subtly visit every planet with life, dropping down tiny little hives that buried themselves under the ground, millions of tiny hives under the ground all over each planet. These hives then released huge swarms of blood sucking flying tiny insects that bit everything they could find but didn't kill, causing much irritation but no casualties to the creatures and organisms living on these planets.
The tiny insects then simply returned to their hives and delivered all of these blood samples and sap samples to processing organs in the hive that analysed everything in these samples, recording every gene and chemical. Synapse organs in these tiny hives then relayed all of this information back to the hive fleet.
That was it…
They didn't need to exterminate anything, simply mildly irritate everyone very occasionally with inexplicable insect swarms that came for a day and then vanished for months or years before the next time they came to sample. The hive fleet got the genes it wanted and the life got to keep living to evolve new genes that would also be sampled. The tyranids could farm new genes for billions of years, far more sensible than needless extinction of life.
The hive mind was not at all motivated by justice and certainly wasn't hysterical or vindictive, it wasn't interested in retribution, punishment of the wicked, it wasn't sentimental or even merciful. It was motivated solely by logic and pragmatism and clear reason. It wanted the maximum amount of genetic biodiversity in the galaxy for as long as possible for its own end goal of obtaining new genes and chemicals it had never encountered before, and for this reason alone it valued the galaxy remaining as alive as it possibly could be.
With this very selfish reasoning in mind, Hive Fleet reasonable was motivated to end all the wars in the galaxy that threatened biodiversity and to actively cull those creatures who were environmentally destructive.
The hive fleet immediately began to spread to every star system in the galaxy, blanketing the entire galaxy in the shadow of the warp so that warp travel and astrotelepathic communication between star systems was completely impossible, cutting every single system off from the rest of the galaxy.
The hive fleet already knew from the chaos gods which planets needed food imports to survive, and they were already sending ships loaded with specially grown food to keep these planetary populations alive (as well as to stop them eating all the native life to extinction to satisfy their hunger). Above hive worlds and forge worlds and mining worlds and other worlds that couldn't feed themselves, huge pods full of edible seeds and fruits dropped down from orbit to feed all the sentient beings to keep them alive to keep evolving.
The Imperium was now essentially just a million isolated planets with no communication and no way of reaching each other, and the Hive Fleet easily located those planets that were a threat to their own biodiversity and they invaded them with overwhelming numbers to kill everyone who was deemed as a threat. Industries that devastated the biosphere were systematically destroyed, individuals who threatened the biosphere were driven away alive if possible, only killed as a last resort to preserve their evolutionary potential.
Terra itself was now starved of new psykers to feed the Emperor and they burned through all their other psykers to sustain the Emperor for as long as possible. It didn't last forever and they resorted to sacrificing more and more people with the slightest of psychic abilities in mass slaughters to try to keep the Emperor alive. They slaughtered their way through more and more people with the slightest of psychic minds until none were left alive, Terra a depopulated mass grave as it took ever more extreme amounts of sacrifice just to sustain the Emperor.
Eventually the Emperor just couldn't be physically fed fast enough with the low quality souls that remained and the Emperor died on his golden throne. The self destruct device built into the golden throne activated at the moment of the Emperor's death and the entire planet earth exploded in a massive explosion that killed everything on the planet. This irritated the tyranids but they got over it.
It didn't really matter, earth didn't have much of a biosphere left by this point and the tyranids scoured all of the floating rocks that remained for every last trace of genetic information. The tyranids had already known about the self destruct device and known that it was inevitable.
The worshippers of chaos all over the galaxy now served gods that served the hive mind, and every daemon and even every daemon prince now served the hive mind. The Black Crusades immediately ceased, every mortal like Abaddon who resisted the peace simply being instantaneously devolved into a mindless chaos spawn. The traitor legions were purged of all who would not obey, and those who remained alive had their brains mutated to make them more peaceful. The worshippers of Khorne mellowed the fuck out, the worshippers of Slaanesh got their fix from much less extreme stuff, the pleasure centres of their brains mutated to be satisfied with stimuli that did not incur a constant body count.
The worshippers of Nurgle contentedly wallowed in their own shit forever and endlessly bred new microorganisms with new genes for the tyranids to sample. The worshippers of Tzeentch grew content to stay in one place and endlessly mutate life forms for the hive fleet to sample.
The Orks were culled heavily wherever they were causing ecological damage, (giving the orks a swell fight in the process), but otherwise they were left alone, with their ships simply being shot down when they attempted to leave their planets.
The eldar were viewed as a threat due to their ability to use the webway to reach other planets and the hive mind searched out the webway gates and entered with the knowledge from Tzeentch, guarding every path in the entire webway that led to another part of the galaxy with Tyranid forces that literally nested and bred inside the webway system.
With Slaanesh now a Tyranid god the soul drain on the eldar race ceased, as the hive mind wanted the eldar race themselves to continue to live and breed so that they could evolve new genes just like all the other life, the tyranids isolating and corralling them like livestock, forming isolated breeding colonies to hopefully breed completely new species of eldar with enough time.
The exodite eldar didn't really mind being able to continue being a bunch of tree hugging elves living in harmony with nature in their diverse planets. The craftworld eldar wept with joy to be spared the thirst of Slaanesh and they mostly just stayed in their self sufficient craft worlds, visited very occasionally by the tyranids to sample all the genes of all the life.
The dark eldar… They were on the one hand happy that they no longer suffered the thirst of Slaanesh, but on the other hand… The sadists were not happy at all to have the victims deprived of them by the guarding of the webway.
The dark eldar furiously attempted to break out of the webway to hunt for new torture victims on the various planets, some attacks succeeded in briefly breaking through Tyranid guard nests and reaching a planet to raid for victims, but the casualties were enormous. The tyranids were converting the matter of every lifeless planet in the galaxy into more tyranids, their numbers were endless and they endlessly reinforced their guard nests with ever greater multitudes of tyranid creatures.
The dark eldar couldn't sustain their casualties and soon they couldn't break out to hunt for outside victims. They instead turned inwards to kill and torture each other and the few slaves they still had left, decimating their own populations until all was death and ruin.
The tyranids then entered the dark city of Commorragh in the webway to clean up the dead bodies and to seek out the few dark eldar who remained, Zoat ambassadors giving them a tyranid ultimatum to stop this madness and start breeding new genes for the tyranids willingly, or have the genestealers simply hold them down and infect them with the genestealer infection that would compel them to breed peacefully.
The dark eldar were naturally arrogant and they fought the Tyranids until every last one of them was held down by an endless number of genestealers and infected, turning them into slaves who did nothing but endlessly breed new generations to try to evolve new genes for the tyranids.
With the gods assimilated and everything alive now turned into basically livestock that existed to breed and evolve for the benefit of the tyranids, all that remained was that which was not alive, namely the robotic necrons and other robot races. Zoat ambassadors were quickly dispatched to every single faction of these unliving things, and a diplomatic dialogue was established to gather information and find ways of dealing with these entities.
The necrons who wanted to be mortal again were greatly welcomed by the tyranids, who even insisted on helping them, using the full power of the chaos gods to learn how to reverse the process of their robotic transformation. The tyranids themselves provided an endless amount of biomass for the necrons to use to make new mortal bodies, and millions of necrons were persuaded (or forced) to become mortal beings once more. These new necrons were then commanded to breed and evolve just like all the other races, with the Tyranids simply too numerous to violently drive off.
Those necrons who did not want to become mortal were simply either forcibly made mortal or else were destroyed to remove them as worthless threats. Much of the necron technology was destroyed by the tyranids to keep them from becoming a threat, the living necrons now little more than slaves in a guilded cage.
The rest of the galaxy was completely consumed, with only those planets that could naturally evolve life one day being spared and set aside as new sources of genes, the tyranids helpfully seeding these planets with chemicals to make life more likely to evolve naturally. These primordial planets were exciting because the new life they might spawn could be anything at all with completely new genes and biochemistry, and the Tyranids took pains to keep these planets quarantined from outside life to prevent contamination, desiring completely new life to develop naturally.
The Emperor resurrected eventually on a human planet, but the hive mind had been expecting him. The hive mind was now so powerful with so many highly psychic tyranids all united together as one that the combined psychic might exceeded even the Emperor by orders of magnitude. The Emperor was squished to a paste in an extremely one sided psychic dual, and every time he resurrected he was likewise destroyed, until he eventually surrendered to the will of the tyranids and just focused on breeding new generations like the rest of their slaves.
Hive Fleet Reasonable now had consumed the entire galaxy apart from their deliberately spared biological reserves to evolve new genes for them. The fleet kept a huge portion of itself permanently in the galaxy to bask in starlight and keep collecting new genes as soon as they evolved, but vast fleets bigger than mortal comprehension set off towards every other galaxy that had yet to be consumed, continuing the endless cycle of growth and conquest that would continue until cosmic expansion eventually took all the remaining galaxies permanently out of reach of even their own faster than light travel, (or until all the stars burned out, whichever came first).
The tyranids had won, the entire galaxy was under the peace imposed by the tyranids, and life continued with every single race enduring for so long that they evolved into completely new species. In many ways this was the happiest possible ending for the age of the Imperium, where everyone won or at least survived, living in harmony with nature and having food to eat, tormented only occasionally by blood sucking tyranid insects that took blood samples to look for new genes.
The End (unless I missed something)
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