HI! This is LoverofGames. I will try to get up more updates, and possibly longer chapters in the future with summer break approaching, but I'm not going to be able to promise anything. Anyway, onto the story!

The Tyranids were an all-consuming force that had left countless galaxies barren behind them. No one knew where the Tyranids came from, who had created them, or anything else about their background. Even the very name 'tyranid' was merely a label, given to them by their foes. What IS known about the tyranids, however, is cause for great concern.

The Tyranids are an extragalactic race of biological horrors that vary in shape and function. They can be smaller than a child, or larger than a super-heavy tank. They outnumbered the stars, and as they devoured the planets in their path their numbers were replenished. They did not take permanent losses easily, as all of their dead were consumed as well. A single planet, once devoured, could easily give the tyranids billions of soldiers.

They are led by a massive consciousness dubbed the 'Hive Mind', and it was ancient. It had existed ever since the birth of their race, and they are all connected to it. Its sheer presence could block out communications and warp travel, leaving lone planets helpless.

Their other most notable feature is their adaptability. Whenever the swarms met a threat that their current tactics of rushing them would not work, they would immediately begin mutations that would enable them to bypass these dangers. Powerful lasers and projectiles would be met with thicker carapaces designed to deal with them, powerful armor would result in sharper claws and stronger arms. With this, and their sheer numbers, they had destroyed everything in their path for aeons.

Currently the Tyranids were being held up by the Imperium and all of its foes in the Milky Way galaxy. This is where multiple vanguard fleets had been destroyed, and their splinters scattered everywhere. This is the story of one such splinter.

When Hive Fleet Leviathan was destroyed, it spawned a countless number of splinter fleets. One of these was moving through space, being driven by the call of the Hive Mind, when they encountered a bump in the road in the form of a warp storm.

The nameless splinter fleet tried to move out, but in vain. The warp storm swallowed it, and sent it spiraling throughout dimensions into a galaxy that had not known true conflict for a thousand years. Now it was at the dawn of a galaxy-encompassing war, and the fleet's arrival would have profound effects on its future.

Endor

The ragged fleet moved out of the storm, just as it dissipated. The tyrant was the first to wake. First, its fleets needed food. Specifically, something that could be broken down for biomass to heal and create. The warp storm had ravaged the splinter fleet, leaving only five or six hundred vessels total. The Tyrant needed to restore its fleets, and to do so, it need biomass. It could detect a great source of it on a small moon. Eagerly, it ordered the fleets in its direction.

The Ewoks had lived on Endor for untold ages. It had seen visits from lost spacefarer crews, and those tales had grown into myths. The present-day Ewoks, however, did not expect their new visitors to come in biological ships. Nothing happened for days, except a massive, overcharged growth of the already lush vegetation. Soon, it was so thick that moving on the ground was nearly impossible. The Ewoks were confused and amazed. They knew that the strange, new visitors had something to do with it, but they had no idea what or why.

Back at the ships, the reigning hive tyrant was confused. The voice of the Hive Mind, ever-present and guiding until now, was not there. There was the minor 'chorus' that the other Tyranids made, but that was absolutely nothing compared to what it usually was. Now that the Tyrant was on its own, it had to make its own decisions. It looked at the lush green moon underneath him, and sent an order. Normally, the Tyranids would 'farm' planets and moons like this for biomass. However, in this case the splinter fleet needed to get rolling again, and thus the Tyrant ordered the total consumption of Endor. The sheer amount of biomass on Endor would be enough to make billions of tyranid warriors, and to repair the damaged fleet. Hundreds of bio-ships had been lost in the storm, and this moon was exactly what it needed.

Even better, the creature had noticed many asteroids moving here with great frequency. It ordered them seeded with genestealers, then directed elsewhere. It needed to know just what was in this galaxy; troops, technological level, and how much of a threat they posed.

Now that the problem of food and scouting had been taken care of, it had one last problem to deal with. Norn queens. The splinter fleet had only had a few dozen Norn queens to begin with, and it needed them in order to create and engineer new strains of tyranids. The problem was that the warp storm had destroyed the hive-ships in which they were stored, killing them. Without them, the Tyranids would stagnate, and die off. The possibility was even greater in this galaxy; after all, who knew what could be out there? However, it couldn't create them. Not yet. The fleet was still recovering, and every last scrap of biomass had to go to healing it, and the hive ships in which they would be placed.

The Tyrant looked at Endor, and ordered its consumption.

The spores began to fall, and with them, the vanguard of the Tyranid fleet.

Ten Days after the Landing

The Ewoks were terrified. The newcomers had launched an all-out invasion, and they were crushing whatever lay in their path. The forest ground was too dangerous to walk on, for it teemed with Tyranid rippers that would tear apart any Ewok unfortunate enough to fall. Nor were their villages safe, high in the tree's as they were. The newcomers had brought huge monsters that would fell the trees themselves, then the surrounded Ewoks would be torn apart.

At the beginning, the Ewoks had set up traps and ambushes. The massive swarm of termagaunts, hormagaunts, and rippers had torn through these with insulting ease. The villages were cut off and surrounded within days. Every hour, waves upon waves of screeching monstrosities would rush at the villages, only to be repulsed by waves of spears and large stones. That and the many that made it could not reach the Ewoks, high up in their tree forts. For three days it went on like this, until the newcomers brought in a terrifying monster that weathered everything that was thrown at it and destroyed everything in its path: the carnifexes.

When the Ewoks first saw them trying to fell a tree, they laughed. That is, until they witnessed the carnifexes simply crush the roots with their claws, and then simply ram it until it fell. With this methodical, slow means, the villages fell one by one.

Within the month, all resistance had been crushed. The Tyranids then used their standard procedure on the small moon. The ripper swarms tore everything on the planet apart: trees, bushes, animals. They would then move back to digestion pools to be consumed, and then sucked up through the capillary towers into the hive ships. The atmosphere was 'absorbed' as well, and this led to the evaporation of the oceans as raw, unfiltered sunlight struck them. This too was absorbed. Before two months had ended, Endor had been turned from an ecological marvel in space, to a barren, lifeless rock.

If the Tyrant had the capacity for free thought enough to smile or feel satisfaction, it would have. As it was, it immediately ordered the construction on more hive-ships, and Norn queens on the existing ones. As the fleet, which now numbered a few thousands, carried out his orders, it decided to watch and wait for information from its scouts.