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Tyranid Hive

The first recorded contact between the Imperium and the Tyranids places their appearance in the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy in 745.M41. However, it is rumoured that the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition had identified possible appearances of this xenos species as far back as the 35th Millennium.

The xenos emerged from the intergalactic space of the Local Group of galaxies, their Hive Mind drawn to the Milky Way by the psychic beacon of the Astronomican transmitted by the Emperor's presence in the Warp from Terra. The first officially recorded contact with the Tyranids for the Imperium of Man came during a Tyranid attack on an Ocean World called Tyran, and from there Hive Fleet Behemoth continued directly towards the center of the galaxy, consuming all the worlds in its path. The Tyranids were defeated, barely, by the efforts of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Space Marines during the Battle of Macragge, although the Ultramarines suffered devastating losses that would take centuries to replace.

In 942.M41, Commissar Ciaphas Cain, while on a mission in the Ice World Nusquam Fundumentibus, discovered hibernating Tyranids buried deep in the permafrost; the swarm was apparently carried to the planet by a Hive Ship that had crashed on the planet seven millennia earlier, prior to any human colonisation. Members of the swarm and subsequently, the Hive Mind, were awakened, but this swarm was eventually defeated. However, the Inquisition was unsettled by the fact that the Tyranids had developed a presence in the galaxy possibly before even the start of the Age of the Imperium; it is not known whether the crashed bio-ship was on a scouting mission when it was lost, was a casualty in a pre-Imperium Tyranid invasion force that was defeated by unknown adversaries, or part of a plan by a Tyranid super-intelligence that may have "seeded" the galaxy with many such slumbering broods.

In 993.M41 the Tyranids returned to the galaxy with Hive Fleet Kraken which, instead of assaulting its targets as a single massed Hive Fleet, split into countless smaller fleets, each enveloping whole star systems before reinforcements could arrive. The brunt of this new attack was borne by the Space Marine Chapters known as the Scythes of the Emperor and the Lamenters; the former Chapter was almost completely destroyed. Though the backbone of the Hive Fleet was broken by its defeats at the Battle of Ichar IV and at the Eldar Craftworld Iyanden, the cost to the Imperium was still great and many splinter fleets broke off from the Kraken to later wreak havoc deep within Imperial space, even reaching as far as the fringes of the Tau Empire.

Only a few years later, in 997.M41 Hive Fleet Leviathan unexpectedly appeared from "below" the plane of the galaxy (on the Z axis) and attacked from two points, cutting off large portions of the galaxy from reinforcements. Just as it seemed the defenses of the Segmentum Solar and perhaps Terra itself would be tested, the Tyranids were distracted by being deflected into the star system of a powerful Ork empire. While the Orks are managing to stall the main Tyranid Hive Fleet's advance, they are likely to reemerge from these battles, victorious and stronger than ever after having absorbed potent Orkoid genetic material into their own genome pool.