Inquisitorial Report: Hive Fleet Consilium
Report by Inquisitor Pyrus of the Ordos Xenos
A small, previously-unidentified offshoot of Hive Fleet Leviathan, Hive Fleet Consilium is easily identified thanks to it's bold color scheme of blue, bone-white, and black. It's precise date of birth is unknown; what is known is that over the course of these past few centuries it has been carving an abnormally-discreet path through the Ultima Sector for quite some time now. Only now has this particularly bizarre lineage of Tyranid bioforms been brought to our attention, thanks to their newly-forged alliance with the Cainite Protectorate. A shocking turn of events, but in hindsight an unsurprising one, considering what we now know about the hive fleet and its capabilities.
In stark contrast to the rest of their kin, Hive Fleet Consilium shows an uncharacteristic degree of restraint in its activities. The fleet's Shadow in the Warp is oddly subdued, doing little to interfere with communications or travel and apparently only serving to cloak the Hive Fleet from detection. The fleet's motions seem to mirror this apparent desire for subtlety, as careful analysis of their path through the Ultima segmentum reveals that the Hive Fleet often bypasses inhabited planets that other hive fleets would directly target, and even outright disregards the psychic lures generated by active genestealer cults. When it does target an (often uninhabited) planet for biomass harvesting, said harvesting happens on a much smaller scale than is typical, leaving much of the planet's ecosystem intact; such planets targeted often recover completely from any damage inflicted within a matter of decades, or in some cases even a single year. Our best guess is that this is a case of long-term planning on the Hive Fleet's part, preserving the targeted biosphere so that it may yield another meal in the future.
Even more stunning is the Hive Fleet's apparent penchant for negotiating with would-be foes, something that no other hive fleet has shown a capacity for. During several void-battles, broadcasts consisting primarily of stunningly comprehensible fascimilies of Low Gothic speech have been received, all essentially amounting to attempts to establish contact and request a ceasefire for the purposes of negotiations (so far, no attempts have been made to respond to such broadcasts, for reasons that should be self-explanatory). Contrary to what some of my colleagues assume, I believe that these entreaties are completely genuine, and are how the dreaded Black Commissar managed to forge some sort of accord with these creatures; based on what we've seen from his forces so far, claims that he bound them to his will through some form of dark witchcraft strike me as utterly absurd.
That being said, while this Hive Fleet may shun combat, this does not mean that it is lacking in capacity for it. Quite the opposite, in fact; in terms of kill-to-death ratios and damage inflicted per individual Tyranid on the battlefield, Hive Fleet Consilium outstrips its more bloodthirsty brethren by several orders of magnitude. That same intellect that gives Consilium its aptitude for diplomacy has allowed its Hive Mind to devise a wide variety of terrifyingly advanced biological wargear, ranging from biological equivalents to imperial las-weaponry, to altered Impaler Cannons transformed into crude gauss rifles that chamber magnetized steel spines, to armor-shredding 'energy blades' that seem to be loosely derived from power weapons.
The Hive Fleet's ingenuity extends beyond the bioforms it brings to bear, shaping the tactics and strategies it employs. Those foolish enough to back Consilium into a corner and force a confrontation will find themselves peppered with lethally-accurate laser blasts by airborne tyranids, cloaked from both eyes and sensors by chameleonic hides. This, naturally, pulls enemy attention skyward... and away from Tyranid Warriors moving to flank their foes, striking from a respectable distance with metallic spines and bolts of bio-plasma. Attempts to mount counterattacks are brutally and efficiently thwarted as psychically-gifted Tyranids erupt from the depths of the warp in bursts of unholy wytchlight, ghostly specters conjured in their presence wreaking havoc on unit cohesion as their empowered blades shred enemy armor.
Bizarrely, other Tyranid Bioforms show extreme hostility toward members of Hive Fleet Consilium, far beyond what is typical for Tyranid-vs-Tyranid conflicts. Genestealer cults have even been known to prematurely rise in response to Consilium's presence, hijacking local SDF assets and launching suicidal assaults on what they claim to be "false star-gods". Considering this, it's little wonder why the Black Commissar believed an alliance with this unorthodox Hive Fleet was worth pursuing; he gains an easy means of teasing Genestealer Cults out of hiding prematurely and Tyranid defenders of his "protectorate" that have minimal impact on warp-travel within local warpspace, and Consilium gains a swath of space where it may openly harvest biomass without fear of reprisal from local forces.
AN: Yep, the Tyranids have come for Slawkenberg... but fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint), these particular tyranids can, in fact, be negotiated with. They prefer it, actually, to the point that if you're radio's tuned to the right frequency, you can actually hear them lamenting the unnecessary violence and emphasizing that it's not too late to surrender and resolve things diplomatically, even as their bio-lasers blow your head clean off its shoulders.