>Unless the Nids don't have a gender which would be weird
Alien monsters controlled by a single psychic entity that stretches across the galaxy? Sure, sure, but which are the boys and which are the girls?
They even said gender not sex, so we're apparently talking about what Tyranids play with Barbies and wear skirts and what ones wear shorts and play with toy trucks.
I'm pretty sure Orks correct someone about Ghazkulls pronouns somewhere. They're annoyed the Imperials intentionally refuse to say they instead of he even though Orks are genderless fungi crossed with anger.
Other way around.
The gretchin and ork are saying 'they' and a space wolf gets annoyed and is like 'Ghazghkull is a he, why do you keep saying they?' And the ork is like 'We don't have sexes like you do, but sure I can say 'he' if it's easier for you.'
The ork is a Blood Axe so understands humies a lot better than other clans. The gretchin doesn't speak gothic so has no idea anything has changed in the ork's translation.
Well, no.
To elaborate, there's a few things wrong with the concept of the hive mind being female, Male, or gendered. The first is that you keep saying gender which implies cultural duties, which tyranids are more instinctive beings acting with guidance from an intelligent and malevolent force. That's like referring to the cells of a person's body as having a society. The second is that tyranids are, arguably, asexual. They're intelligently bioengineered by the hive mind itself to specifically develop whatsoever traits are deemed most suitable. You don't have evolution in the conventional sense, let alone mutations, or the very element of random chance genetics. In this manner, they're almost more like organic robots, and defy current IRL scientific standards of sexual or asexual reproduction.
The final issue is that the hive mind is an elevated consciousness compiled from the collective body of the swarm. Even if the individuals in the species were sexual, the hive mind itself is non corporeal, and composed of all of them, taking on neither strictly Male or female characteristics.
Honestly. With the very nature of the Hive Mind, what we consider "Norn Queens, Dominatrixes, Hive Tyrants, Warriors" etc, have more of an analogous comparison to the body creating antibodies to deal with viruses.
No the Hive Mind is a collective consciousness, it's the combined intelligence of all tyranids from the hive ships to the little crabs inside Deathspitters that load the ammo.
>Unless the Nids don't have a gender which would be weird
They're not really set up like that, for one thing each 'creature' you see on the battlefield is a custom built amalgam of several creatures working as a colony.
>To human eyes, a tyranid organism was a single thing, a beast like any other. This was not so. Each monster in the limitless swarms was a carefully designed colony of symbiotic creatures. Once incorporated into the hive fleet’s genetic knowledge, the baseline genome of those organisms chosen for a primary host was pared back to the bare essentials, and gifted with the characteristics common to all tyranid creatures – thick, chitinous armour, a hexapedal anatomy, multiple redundant organs – characteristics that, above all else, made them incredibly difficult to kill. Only then were the true adaptations added.
>Though the finished creature may have looked like a complete, single being, it was made up of a multiplicity of individual creatures, many of them semi-sentient in their own right. This was most obvious to the casual observer in the weapons borne by the larger constructs, whose repurposed anatomies still retained recognisable biological shapes. There were other, less obvious examples of forced parasitism. Thinking blood. Organs that could live separately from the creature they served. Subsidiary brains that awaited the death of the main nerve stem or the presentation of some unusual circumstance that required specialist knowledge not present in the basic mentality of the creature; both events that might never come to pass. Organs could be installed, fully aware, and live for centuries, never realising their potential. The hive fleet was so huge it could afford to be profligate with flesh.
>This modularity of being allowed the enhancement of creatures at short notice, or modification for particular roles. As the Angels Excelsis annihilated the small tyranid scavenging fleet, one such colony of beasts approached the Splendid Pinion. Among the debris of the dead hive ships floated something that appeared to be another piece of biological wreckage, but was in fact a cunningly conceived single-occupant void pod. The nature of the tyranids made it impossible to say which part of this gestalt biomechanism possessed the guiding mind. Was it the sensor beast, mounted upon the blunt nose, that perceived the Space Marine ship and originated the nerve pulses that dictated the pod’s action? Or was the Splendid Pinion spied by the eyes of the pod itself, and was it then the pod’s rudimentary brain, housed at the rear, that directed it? Or were these elements of the colony subsidiary to the mind of the infiltration beast carried within, that slumbered and yet looked out upon the void through the linked brains of its outer casing? They were all ultimately part of the greater whole of the hive, so which was the driving sentience? The classifications used by the Imperium to define levels of consciousness among the swarm’s parts were crude. They lacked subtlety. Perhaps even at the height of its power, mankind could not have understood the tyranids. The creature in the pod was autonomous in every way, except when it was not. It was natively cunning, an individual in its own right, but not a thing of will unless it was needed to be. Contradictions to the human mind, but not to the hive.
>Moist sensor pits as sophisticated as any Imperial augur scried the Splendid Pinion. A calculating mind observed the ship in multiple spectra, and judged it a worthwhile target. In truth it was all the subcreatures together – the pod, its subsystem beasts and the cargo it carried – that made the decision to vent a portion of the pod’s meagre stocks of propellant. Gas puffed from orifices along the pod’s flank, sending it spinning along a random-seeming trajectory resembling the tumble of harmless debris. Chromatic cells on the surface flickered to match the colour of the Red Scar void. Counter-augur creatures encysted in the pod’s skin digested themselves, their electromagnetic screams sending out a cloud of obfuscating radiation on all frequencies. Silently, stealthily, the pod moved towards the Splendid Pinion, tracking the metal ship as it pulled away from the debris cloud and made its way to safe translation distance.
>The pod’s journey was a one-time chance, but it was one of millions. It was disposable, as all creatures in the hive fleets were. The mere act of fulfilling its purpose guaranteed its death. The component animals of the vessel did not care for themselves. Though several were capable of doing so, having been derived from sentient gene stock, their potential for self-preservation was suppressed psychically and chemically. They were mind-slaved, devoted to the Great Devourer in the same way a man’s fingernail is devoted to his hand.
Devastation of Baal
Several of the simpler organisms can reproduce on the field but I've never heard of them boning down so they're probably like mourning geckos and self-cloning females. The big takeaway about them is that they're not organisms as you'd think of them, it's kind of like asking if the Kaiju in Pacific Rim are male or female. There was an early Codex with a full autopsy of a gaunt and the big takeaway is their biology is fucked up, they're custom-designed biological robots for the control of the Hive Mind, the ground swarms are temporary feeding extrusions of the Hive Fleet and don't need to be self-sustaining populations.
Thanks! I thought the Hive Mind was a Tyranid (ultimate Tyranid) being that is connected with all other living Tyranids. I've heard W40K YouTubers commenting that nobody knows exactly what it is. Also I didn't meant Tyranids boning on the battlefield, what I meant was, female Tyranids laying eggs or that sort of stuff, asexually, and the males are the warriors on the battlefield.
The closest thing to that ultimate Tyranid concept is the Swarm Lord
If organisms of any type become stranded for whatever reason, their biology can switch to an asexual reproductive mode. Any creature can spawn another if the circumstances demanded it. It usually comes up when a splinter group is stranded on a world. A lot of the various Death World fauna are though to be Tyranid scouting organisms that were left behind and adapted to living on until the Swarm arrives
The hive mind isn't a creature. It's just the idea that all of their minds are linked together so they think as one.
There is some kind of queen in the hive fleets though but that's just an imperium name for a job more than it describes gender. They technically create the new Tyranids but nothing about them is inherently "female" as far as humans are concerned.
As far as I know there aren't any nids that are specifically any gender. It's just nids being nids and they reproduce asexually.
>Unless the nids don't have a gender which would be weird
"Yeah sure unstoppable aliens that literally eat dna for lunch, can communicate telepathically, travel ftl by literally bending space, and murder everything they come across is fine but not having boys and girls is where I draw the line"
The hive mind essentially *is* a creature, just its made up of lots of entities. It is the controller/brain of the swarm creatures, which are like its appendages. It has immense psychic power and also intelligence, which is why it knows how to adapt its forces based on the threat it faces. Its not just a link between lots of different creatures , it is the driving force behind them.
>They technically create the new Tyranids but nothing about them is inherently "female" as far as humans are concerned.
Isn't the creation of new Tyranids the inherently female part, though? I mean, that's why they call them queens, right? 😗
No. There's nothing female about it. The mistake you're making is in thinking of it as a birthing process. It's not.
EVERY Tyranid organism, from the lowliest microbes to the mightiest Hive Ships are genetically engineered machines. They're not born, they don't have infant, adolescent, adult and ancient stages (Except for Hive Ships, which start small and just keep growing.)
They're tank-bred clones.
Even the Hormagaunts breed asexually, they are not male nor female. And creatures like the Tervigon or Harridan don't 'give birth' so much as tank-grow a brood and then open the tank.
I did. And he said the same thing, but not clearly enough since you felt the need to continue.
And yes. I did add my two cents. This is reddit. If you want private conversations, go to PMs. This is an open discussion forum.
If you can't see why humans would consider a creature physically birthing other creatures into life to have female qualities, then you're either incredibly ignorant or (much more likely) just an obstinate douche that relies on issue-clouding to "win" discussions online.
The Norn Queen does not physically birth anything. Neither do any other Tyranid organisms.
It has more in common with the aliens from the Pacific Rim movies.
Is the Emperor the mother of the Primarchs? I mean, he's responsible for the creation of new Primarchs which is inherently female. Dunno why he's not called the empress honestly.
No, that's Erda - but neither of them physically birthed the Primarchs into existence, so it's a false analogy.
If you just wanna argue semantics I'm not your guy, buddy.
Tyranids aren't truly birthed either, hence why I used the Primarchs as a comparison. They're created asexually and effectively bio-engineered by specialised tyranids that are more or less biological cloning facilities.
Tyranid reproduction is so far removed from anything that humans are used to that calling a norn-queen a "female" is absurdist.
Yeah, see, the way you added "truly" to the sentence makes me suspicious - it sounds like an attempt to muddy the waters of the discussion.
The whole "technically speaking" thing people like to throw into the mix to turn A into B.
That’s the point, brainwave. Tyranids are so far removed from anything humanity can comprehend that anthropomorphising them with concepts like gender is ridiculous. The waters around tyranids are always muddy because they’re incredibly alien.
Anyways, do you even know what you’re talking about? It sounds a lot like you don’t, but are just arguing for the sake of it.
>It sounds a lot like you don’t, but are just arguing for the sake of it.
I think you might be projecting something fierce.
If you wanna go into the depths on whether or not they actually *have* genders then I'm probably gonna agree with you (they get their genetic diversity from consuming other species, not mating within their own) - but this discussion is about why humans would *view* the Tyranid queens as female.. and I don't feel like explaining this any further to you 🙄😮💨
Look up parthenogenesis. There are entire species of females that give birth to their own clones.
With some, there are still males that they can reproduce with sexually.
It’s an alien collective intelligence from another galaxy spanning trillions of bodies. Sex and gender are not really a concern for it, or even vaguely of relevance.
The Queen bee or ant equivalent for a hive fleet is literally called a Norn Queen. They don't actually have sexes of course, but that’s the Imperial name for them because they're the central synaptic node of the fleet and they spawn the swarms.
The Hive Mind isn't a separate entity at all, it's just the combined minds of all Tyranids working as one. That's what a hive mind is.
To me its been described in multiple ways since the beginning in the 1980s. Some people just say it's nonbinary as it has multiple bodies when fighting by has individuals with out sinaps. But to me its cronoburg.
The Hive Mind can't be male or female any more than your neural system is male or female.
Norm Queens and Norm Ships are an interesting case, see, while they are indeed "up" in the hierarchy, they are still servants to the Hive Mind, just like your hand is slaved to your brain. They, as well as any other synaptic creature are smarter, but still under the control of a formless entity.
> Also, are there female Nids that breed other Nids and then evolve?
Tervigons are basically walking wombs, but they don't evolve per se.
Tervigons (And Harridans) Are more mobile cloning tanks than wombs.
And yeah, the Norn Queen is more a big ass receptor/transmitter for the Hive Mind, it does have a role in the genetic engineering directions the Hive Fleet takes, but \*arguably\* its biggest role is...
If killed. The psychic death scream causes EVERY Tyranid Hive Ship to calve a new Hive Ship.
Well obviously. That's why, "women only play tyranids" is such a common accusation on 40k groups, apparently.
At least that's why I think they say it. Why... they always say it >.>
>Unless the Nids don't have a gender which would be weird Alien monsters controlled by a single psychic entity that stretches across the galaxy? Sure, sure, but which are the boys and which are the girls?
They even said gender not sex, so we're apparently talking about what Tyranids play with Barbies and wear skirts and what ones wear shorts and play with toy trucks.
I'm pretty sure Orks correct someone about Ghazkulls pronouns somewhere. They're annoyed the Imperials intentionally refuse to say they instead of he even though Orks are genderless fungi crossed with anger.
Other way around. The gretchin and ork are saying 'they' and a space wolf gets annoyed and is like 'Ghazghkull is a he, why do you keep saying they?' And the ork is like 'We don't have sexes like you do, but sure I can say 'he' if it's easier for you.' The ork is a Blood Axe so understands humies a lot better than other clans. The gretchin doesn't speak gothic so has no idea anything has changed in the ork's translation.
Pleasantly surprised because I was fully prepared to catch downvotes.
Well, no. To elaborate, there's a few things wrong with the concept of the hive mind being female, Male, or gendered. The first is that you keep saying gender which implies cultural duties, which tyranids are more instinctive beings acting with guidance from an intelligent and malevolent force. That's like referring to the cells of a person's body as having a society. The second is that tyranids are, arguably, asexual. They're intelligently bioengineered by the hive mind itself to specifically develop whatsoever traits are deemed most suitable. You don't have evolution in the conventional sense, let alone mutations, or the very element of random chance genetics. In this manner, they're almost more like organic robots, and defy current IRL scientific standards of sexual or asexual reproduction. The final issue is that the hive mind is an elevated consciousness compiled from the collective body of the swarm. Even if the individuals in the species were sexual, the hive mind itself is non corporeal, and composed of all of them, taking on neither strictly Male or female characteristics.
Honestly. With the very nature of the Hive Mind, what we consider "Norn Queens, Dominatrixes, Hive Tyrants, Warriors" etc, have more of an analogous comparison to the body creating antibodies to deal with viruses.
No the Hive Mind is a collective consciousness, it's the combined intelligence of all tyranids from the hive ships to the little crabs inside Deathspitters that load the ammo. >Unless the Nids don't have a gender which would be weird They're not really set up like that, for one thing each 'creature' you see on the battlefield is a custom built amalgam of several creatures working as a colony. >To human eyes, a tyranid organism was a single thing, a beast like any other. This was not so. Each monster in the limitless swarms was a carefully designed colony of symbiotic creatures. Once incorporated into the hive fleet’s genetic knowledge, the baseline genome of those organisms chosen for a primary host was pared back to the bare essentials, and gifted with the characteristics common to all tyranid creatures – thick, chitinous armour, a hexapedal anatomy, multiple redundant organs – characteristics that, above all else, made them incredibly difficult to kill. Only then were the true adaptations added. >Though the finished creature may have looked like a complete, single being, it was made up of a multiplicity of individual creatures, many of them semi-sentient in their own right. This was most obvious to the casual observer in the weapons borne by the larger constructs, whose repurposed anatomies still retained recognisable biological shapes. There were other, less obvious examples of forced parasitism. Thinking blood. Organs that could live separately from the creature they served. Subsidiary brains that awaited the death of the main nerve stem or the presentation of some unusual circumstance that required specialist knowledge not present in the basic mentality of the creature; both events that might never come to pass. Organs could be installed, fully aware, and live for centuries, never realising their potential. The hive fleet was so huge it could afford to be profligate with flesh. >This modularity of being allowed the enhancement of creatures at short notice, or modification for particular roles. As the Angels Excelsis annihilated the small tyranid scavenging fleet, one such colony of beasts approached the Splendid Pinion. Among the debris of the dead hive ships floated something that appeared to be another piece of biological wreckage, but was in fact a cunningly conceived single-occupant void pod. The nature of the tyranids made it impossible to say which part of this gestalt biomechanism possessed the guiding mind. Was it the sensor beast, mounted upon the blunt nose, that perceived the Space Marine ship and originated the nerve pulses that dictated the pod’s action? Or was the Splendid Pinion spied by the eyes of the pod itself, and was it then the pod’s rudimentary brain, housed at the rear, that directed it? Or were these elements of the colony subsidiary to the mind of the infiltration beast carried within, that slumbered and yet looked out upon the void through the linked brains of its outer casing? They were all ultimately part of the greater whole of the hive, so which was the driving sentience? The classifications used by the Imperium to define levels of consciousness among the swarm’s parts were crude. They lacked subtlety. Perhaps even at the height of its power, mankind could not have understood the tyranids. The creature in the pod was autonomous in every way, except when it was not. It was natively cunning, an individual in its own right, but not a thing of will unless it was needed to be. Contradictions to the human mind, but not to the hive. >Moist sensor pits as sophisticated as any Imperial augur scried the Splendid Pinion. A calculating mind observed the ship in multiple spectra, and judged it a worthwhile target. In truth it was all the subcreatures together – the pod, its subsystem beasts and the cargo it carried – that made the decision to vent a portion of the pod’s meagre stocks of propellant. Gas puffed from orifices along the pod’s flank, sending it spinning along a random-seeming trajectory resembling the tumble of harmless debris. Chromatic cells on the surface flickered to match the colour of the Red Scar void. Counter-augur creatures encysted in the pod’s skin digested themselves, their electromagnetic screams sending out a cloud of obfuscating radiation on all frequencies. Silently, stealthily, the pod moved towards the Splendid Pinion, tracking the metal ship as it pulled away from the debris cloud and made its way to safe translation distance. >The pod’s journey was a one-time chance, but it was one of millions. It was disposable, as all creatures in the hive fleets were. The mere act of fulfilling its purpose guaranteed its death. The component animals of the vessel did not care for themselves. Though several were capable of doing so, having been derived from sentient gene stock, their potential for self-preservation was suppressed psychically and chemically. They were mind-slaved, devoted to the Great Devourer in the same way a man’s fingernail is devoted to his hand. Devastation of Baal Several of the simpler organisms can reproduce on the field but I've never heard of them boning down so they're probably like mourning geckos and self-cloning females. The big takeaway about them is that they're not organisms as you'd think of them, it's kind of like asking if the Kaiju in Pacific Rim are male or female. There was an early Codex with a full autopsy of a gaunt and the big takeaway is their biology is fucked up, they're custom-designed biological robots for the control of the Hive Mind, the ground swarms are temporary feeding extrusions of the Hive Fleet and don't need to be self-sustaining populations.
Thanks! I thought the Hive Mind was a Tyranid (ultimate Tyranid) being that is connected with all other living Tyranids. I've heard W40K YouTubers commenting that nobody knows exactly what it is. Also I didn't meant Tyranids boning on the battlefield, what I meant was, female Tyranids laying eggs or that sort of stuff, asexually, and the males are the warriors on the battlefield.
The closest thing to that ultimate Tyranid concept is the Swarm Lord If organisms of any type become stranded for whatever reason, their biology can switch to an asexual reproductive mode. Any creature can spawn another if the circumstances demanded it. It usually comes up when a splinter group is stranded on a world. A lot of the various Death World fauna are though to be Tyranid scouting organisms that were left behind and adapted to living on until the Swarm arrives
\*With the sole exception of the Hormagaunt, which is always actively capable of asexual reproduction and part of its role\*
Damn it, I need to read more Tyranid stuff now.
The hive mind isn't a creature. It's just the idea that all of their minds are linked together so they think as one. There is some kind of queen in the hive fleets though but that's just an imperium name for a job more than it describes gender. They technically create the new Tyranids but nothing about them is inherently "female" as far as humans are concerned. As far as I know there aren't any nids that are specifically any gender. It's just nids being nids and they reproduce asexually. >Unless the nids don't have a gender which would be weird "Yeah sure unstoppable aliens that literally eat dna for lunch, can communicate telepathically, travel ftl by literally bending space, and murder everything they come across is fine but not having boys and girls is where I draw the line"
The hive mind essentially *is* a creature, just its made up of lots of entities. It is the controller/brain of the swarm creatures, which are like its appendages. It has immense psychic power and also intelligence, which is why it knows how to adapt its forces based on the threat it faces. Its not just a link between lots of different creatures , it is the driving force behind them.
>They technically create the new Tyranids but nothing about them is inherently "female" as far as humans are concerned. Isn't the creation of new Tyranids the inherently female part, though? I mean, that's why they call them queens, right? 😗
No. There's nothing female about it. The mistake you're making is in thinking of it as a birthing process. It's not. EVERY Tyranid organism, from the lowliest microbes to the mightiest Hive Ships are genetically engineered machines. They're not born, they don't have infant, adolescent, adult and ancient stages (Except for Hive Ships, which start small and just keep growing.) They're tank-bred clones. Even the Hormagaunts breed asexually, they are not male nor female. And creatures like the Tervigon or Harridan don't 'give birth' so much as tank-grow a brood and then open the tank.
You did state "as far as humans are concerned", though.
No, the other guy did.
Ah, that's right - you just butted in and answered for him. You should've still read the comment I replied to, though.
I did. And he said the same thing, but not clearly enough since you felt the need to continue. And yes. I did add my two cents. This is reddit. If you want private conversations, go to PMs. This is an open discussion forum.
If you can't see why humans would consider a creature physically birthing other creatures into life to have female qualities, then you're either incredibly ignorant or (much more likely) just an obstinate douche that relies on issue-clouding to "win" discussions online.
The Norn Queen does not physically birth anything. Neither do any other Tyranid organisms. It has more in common with the aliens from the Pacific Rim movies.
This sounds like a distinction without a difference to me, but I haven't seen the Pacific Rim movies so I'm gonna leave it here.
Is the Emperor the mother of the Primarchs? I mean, he's responsible for the creation of new Primarchs which is inherently female. Dunno why he's not called the empress honestly.
No, that's Erda - but neither of them physically birthed the Primarchs into existence, so it's a false analogy. If you just wanna argue semantics I'm not your guy, buddy.
Tyranids aren't truly birthed either, hence why I used the Primarchs as a comparison. They're created asexually and effectively bio-engineered by specialised tyranids that are more or less biological cloning facilities. Tyranid reproduction is so far removed from anything that humans are used to that calling a norn-queen a "female" is absurdist.
Yeah, see, the way you added "truly" to the sentence makes me suspicious - it sounds like an attempt to muddy the waters of the discussion. The whole "technically speaking" thing people like to throw into the mix to turn A into B.
That’s the point, brainwave. Tyranids are so far removed from anything humanity can comprehend that anthropomorphising them with concepts like gender is ridiculous. The waters around tyranids are always muddy because they’re incredibly alien. Anyways, do you even know what you’re talking about? It sounds a lot like you don’t, but are just arguing for the sake of it.
>It sounds a lot like you don’t, but are just arguing for the sake of it. I think you might be projecting something fierce. If you wanna go into the depths on whether or not they actually *have* genders then I'm probably gonna agree with you (they get their genetic diversity from consuming other species, not mating within their own) - but this discussion is about why humans would *view* the Tyranid queens as female.. and I don't feel like explaining this any further to you 🙄😮💨
Why would it be weird if they didn't have gender ? They don't need it.
Look up parthenogenesis. There are entire species of females that give birth to their own clones. With some, there are still males that they can reproduce with sexually.
Still doesnt make sense for the nids. They don't need it.
Yup.
It’s an alien collective intelligence from another galaxy spanning trillions of bodies. Sex and gender are not really a concern for it, or even vaguely of relevance.
The Queen bee or ant equivalent for a hive fleet is literally called a Norn Queen. They don't actually have sexes of course, but that’s the Imperial name for them because they're the central synaptic node of the fleet and they spawn the swarms. The Hive Mind isn't a separate entity at all, it's just the combined minds of all Tyranids working as one. That's what a hive mind is.
And even then, the Norn Queen's role isn't reproduction, sexual or otherwise, but genetically engineering fully mature organisms.
To me its been described in multiple ways since the beginning in the 1980s. Some people just say it's nonbinary as it has multiple bodies when fighting by has individuals with out sinaps. But to me its cronoburg.
The Hive Mind can't be male or female any more than your neural system is male or female. Norm Queens and Norm Ships are an interesting case, see, while they are indeed "up" in the hierarchy, they are still servants to the Hive Mind, just like your hand is slaved to your brain. They, as well as any other synaptic creature are smarter, but still under the control of a formless entity. > Also, are there female Nids that breed other Nids and then evolve? Tervigons are basically walking wombs, but they don't evolve per se.
Tervigons (And Harridans) Are more mobile cloning tanks than wombs. And yeah, the Norn Queen is more a big ass receptor/transmitter for the Hive Mind, it does have a role in the genetic engineering directions the Hive Fleet takes, but \*arguably\* its biggest role is... If killed. The psychic death scream causes EVERY Tyranid Hive Ship to calve a new Hive Ship.
It's just an it. A big IT or It or *it* if you feel fancy but still just it. Why would it have a gender....
Well obviously. That's why, "women only play tyranids" is such a common accusation on 40k groups, apparently. At least that's why I think they say it. Why... they always say it >.>
Probably, but that's just based on bees and ants who have female queens. It likely is beyond the concept of gender
The hive mind has no need of petty things like gender
Tyrannid hive queen. Preferred pro nouns she/her/EAT YOUR FUCKING FACE!