Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

== Zoats ==

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was an alien race driven to the brink of extinction by the tyranids. The Zoats, the original Zoats, knew that their day was done. Their galaxy was devoured and they the last pocket of meat were soon to be gobbled up. So they took what they could of themselves and turned the mutagenic properties of the Star Locusts against them. They infected themselves with a virus that when they were eaten would spread to the rest of the Hive Fleet and lie dormant until such time as the Hive found a new feeding ground and began to multiply again. When the tyranids got to a new galaxy and the Norn Queens began to grow a new batch of tyranids the Zoats emerged from the tyranids like parasitic wasps out of a host. Kill tyranid biomorphs and Norn Queen before lobotomizing a Hive Ship and taking off into the galaxy. One stays behind to suicide bomb the Hive Ship into another Hive or the nearest star if that's not an option. Other zoats ditch the hive ship, build their own from ceramics and tyranid flesh and then set out to warn the galaxy what's coming and to tool up like there's no tomorrow like the Silver Surfer before Galactus. Then once the galaxy is sufficiently warned the turn around and set out to build an army to sabotage the tyranids as much as they can before dying to the last. They've done this several times.

The Zoats are a sobering reminder that the tyranids are a very real threat and failure against them is not an option. They have eaten whole galaxies before and they have again.

It should be noted that the Zoats the Milky Way knows and loves are not the original Zoats (or are they?). They are tyranid bioforms made in the image of the Zoats. Their original ships were hijacked bio-ships, and even their newer Zoat-made ships are built with stolen tyranid bits. They are capable of interfacing with and using tyranid biotechnology and weapons, though they hate it and ditch tyranid biotech for other weapons as soon as possible. The modern Zoats are an infection made in the image of Zoat to be their final insult to the Great Devourer, living spite, a sad and terrible mockery of what their makers were. They take that and they run with it. Everything the Zoats do is to spite the tyranids in some way. It's the reason they're Xenos Independens. Sabotage a Hive Fleet? Spites the 'nids. Help an Imperial force fight off a splinter fleet? Spites the 'nids. Save civilians? One more life kept out of the jaws of the Great Devourer and therefore a middle finger to the Hive Mind. 

However, they are not part of the Imperial military and they don't listen to Imperial commands. Get across how they can do something to mess up the tyranids and they'll consider it. They cooperate with the Imperium because the Imperium kills tyranids. Not because they like them. Not to mention that a lot of actions that spite the tyranids also harm the Imperium. Wake up a Tomb World to kill a Hive Fleet, despite the fact that it subsequently goes on a ramapage across the sector? Spites the 'nids. Attract a Chaos Warband to attack a planet with a strong Genestealer cult? Spites the 'nids.

They don't know where they came from, not anymore. The new breed of Zoat have murky memories of their progenitors at best, there was a limit on how much knowledge could be programmed via virus. It doesn't matter to them.

The Zoats  present the Imperium with a dilemma. They are 'Nid but not 'Nid. They are sapient and sentient but they have no art, accomplishments of their own and literally exist to do nothing but fight and die and take as many of the 'Nids with them. They are a bizarre cross between pitiable and frightening. There would be dissenting opinion on whether they are people. The Zoat point out that maybe they are or maybe they aren't, but the point is academic so long as the Hive lives.

The Zoats have no idea what they'll do in the unlikely event the Hive Mind is killed. Maybe one day they will be Zoat again, or at least some sort of Zoat. Maybe, the Zoats tell each other, maybe once this is all over they can rebuild somehing in memory of the True Zoat. Maybe they can be real people one day. But not today. Today there is war. And today is a good day to die.

'''Possible Tyranid Origin'''

This was brought up in the threads, and while people liked the idea it was thought that making it canon took too much of the mystery out of the nature of tyranids as an Outside Context Problem. It was decided to leave this as merely one of multiple possible origins for the tyranids, possibly no more than a crazy off-the-wall AdBio hypothesis, hence why it is hidden in a block here. It's not like the Imperium would be able to find out either way. This could be where the tyranids came from, or it could be that tyranids are simply natural galactic predators writ large and the natural state of the galaxy without [[Old Ones|psychic lizard wizards]] to keep the worst of stuff at bay, etc.

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Few who fight the tyranids on the eastern fringe could fail to be aware of the Zoats, the race of six-limbed lizard-like creatures who fight the tyranids, seemingly renegade organisms from the Hive Mind itself, claiming to be the biological simulacra of another race that once opposed the tyranids in another galaxy long ago. However, some Ordo Xenos inquisitors and Adeptus Biologicus have proposed that the link between the Zoats and the tyranids is much more personal than the Zoats would like to admit. It is admittedly not a strong theory, built up from bits and pieces of evidence gathered together over the span of four millennia. Forensic archaeology is rather difficult when all of the pertinent events in question occurred millions of years ago in another galaxy. The Zoats themselves are silent on this theory. Whether it is because they do not know or because it hits uncomfortably close to the truth is a mystery.

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Ages ago in a galaxy quite a ways a way there was once a race. A technologically advanced race, not on par with the Old Ones but maybe equivalent to the Necrontyr. Masters of flesh and biotechnology. As all races do after a certain point, they began to think seriously about the bigger things in life. Mortality. Inequality. Understanding their fellow being.

And so the race came up with what they thought was the solution. Upload everyone’s mind into a single interconnected network, free from the constraints of flesh, from which bodies could be created on demand. On paper it seemed perfect. No one would die unless they chose to. No mind would be forced inhabit a body it did not want to. Everyone would instantly be able to see the perspective of anyone else, creating universal empathy. And the network was ever increasing, ever growing, so not only would the race benefit, but they could bring their gift to everyone in existence. There would be no more death, no more disease, no more hatred. For anyone.

Naturally, something went horribly wrong. What should have been an interlinked network of independent minds collapsed into a single morass, differences between individual thought patterns blurring until only the most universal impulses remained. Eat. Grow. Reproduce. The subroutines designed to bring in fresh matter to power the network and grow forms for resleeving individual minds corrupted into the biotechnological equivalent of gray goo. The race had tried to achieve the singularity, and instead all they had done was go past an event horizon.

The only people to survive this singularity, which had suddenly become one in a very literal sense, were the people who refused to upload their minds to the network in the first place. They suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of a quadrillion gaping maws of what had once been their entire species, mutated into unrecognizability. And so they ran. And when they could not run, they fought. And when they could not run or fight any further, they used their biotechnological talents on themselves, turning themselves into a genetic parasite which would hide within the network that had once been the summed minds of their brothers and sisters. They modified themselves to pop out  and fight the tyranids whenever they tried to feed, in the hopes that some day some race will reach the point that they will be able to finally defeat and kill the tyranids. They fought the tyranids in their home galaxy. They fought them in Andromeda. They fight them here. Everywhere they go, they bring the same message to the same message to every race they encounter, in the hopes that they will heed their warnings and either flee or militarize to the point they can fight the tyranids.

“Run, for in our hubris the gift of our people has come for you.”

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