Necrons: The C'tan known as the Outsider created them.
Extra-Galactic: Some being created the ultimate bio-weapon and lost control.
Old-One: A crazed Old-One created them to deprive the C'tan of souls.
Other: The 'nids were created or evolbed naturally.
Heh.I would have to say it had to do with holiday campers overuse of "OFF!" and "DEET". If only they knew what they were doing!
I've always gone with straight natural evolution as the origin of the Tyranids. Although the threads here was the first place I ever heard the theory about a single Old One escaping off into another galaxy and creating them, and there is a certain appeal to that idea. However, I do think if that is the "truth," as it were, I think the bugs have far, far outstretched that initial point.
Think of it this way. Depending on what you like to believe, there's a fair amount of evidence that the "Krork" were originally designed with the idea the Gretchin would be in charge. They're the smart, wiley ones and they could lead the Krork as an unstoppable army of life against the Necron threat. But nature took over, thousands and thousands of years passed, and... well, that's not what the Krork are today, are they?
If the Tyranids did start with the Old Ones, I'd say it was the same thing. Maybe some lone, half-crazed Old One escaped the C'Tan billions of years ago, found himself halfway across the universe, and created his own last-ditch resistance force. But between then and now, crossing a lot of time and space, they've become something very, very different.
Either way, I don't think anyone controls them. They're a hive. That's part of what's so creepy about them.
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I think you got the two competing theories for Ork creation mixed up: The first is that the Snotlings (The variety smaller then Gretchin) ate a special kind of mushroom that made them soat in intelligence, giving their the brains to manipulate the larger Orks into spreading across the galaxy. When they ate up all the mushrooms, they were reverted into slaves. So the Snotlings were the 'Brain Boyz' of Ork lore.Think of it this way. Depending on what you like to believe, there's a fair amount of evidence that the "Krork" were originally designed with the idea the Gretchin would be in charge. They're the smart, wiley ones and they could lead the Krork as an unstoppable army of life against the Necron threat. But nature took over, thousands and thousands of years passed, and... well, that's not what the Krork are today, are they?
The other theory is that the Old Ones created the Orks, or 'Krork', as a weapon against the necrons. But even they weren't able at the time to stop the C'tan.
I think it was either the old ones or the C'tan/Necrons.
In a piece of Necron background, it talks about them going in to self-imposed 'hibernation' (for want of a better word) because (after the war in heaven) there was a 'plague' spreading across the galaxy.
Going on that, and some other stuff that's in the Xenology book and other bits of background I've read I think it's plausible that the 'Nids were either developed by:
a) The Old Ones as a desperate gambit to finally defeat the Necrons & C'tan;
or b) the C'tan/Necrons themselves, as the Necrons hate all life, and the Hive Fleets have been known to avoid Tomb Worlds.
Either way, I think they originate from that time, and after consuming almost all life from the galaxy at the end of the War in Heaven, they drifted off to another galaxy to feed their.
Over Billions of years, they've consumed galaxy after galaxy, and are now drifting back to ours seeing as it's kind of got re-populated
The plague you're referring to is the Enslaver plague. They're totally separate warp-related entities.
Hive fleets avoid Necrons simply because they have no biomass to consume.
I think that the Tyranids are exactly what they appear to be- a race that began as a highly successful predator, which gradually became a super-efficient master of evolution by controlling their own DNA structures to reflect changing conditions and environments on their native planet. The individual predators shared a communal psychic link, which allowed them to dominate. The whole of their minds was greater than the sum of its parts.
As to how they got off their native planet, they either evolved space flight naturally after consuming all bio-mass on the planet (possible, but would need very guided evolution by the collective hive mind) or were found by another race from that galaxy who perhaps captured some sample specimens. From there they probably took over the space ship and eventually evolved their own ships.
There's my whole theory.
I'm sure i've read somewhere that their expidential eating/ breading cycle turned their home system into one big Tyranid and the fleets into this system are that living bio-systems way of finding more food.
I'm gonna go with the StarCraft/Zerg approach. They were created by an ancient, no-longer-in-existence race that felt the need to "play god". The 'Nids were given a mutable genome in order to "super-evolve" to allow their creators to see progress on a much shorter time scale...Say a thousand years versus a million. They just....got out of hand, so to speak.