Editing Nobledark Imperium Xenos (section)

=== The Leviathan of Sotha ===

The Leviathan of Sotha is a miracle of history. Preserved through a chance fluke, the Imperium has learned more about tyranids from this vessel than it has from dozens of minor skirmishes. During the Battle of Sotha in the First Battle for Ultramar between the Imperium and Hive Fleet Behemoth, one of the planet’s surface to orbit guns shot down a tyranid Hive Ship near the planet’s moon. The Hive Ship crash-landed on the nearby moon, where it died of what was either the tyranid equivalent of a broken spine or massive internal organ damage. The total vacuum of the moon prevented the outer surface of the hive ship from decaying, either from external microbes or the tyranid microfauna contained within, and so much of the carcass remains as pristine as the day it died.

This is not to say the Hive Ship is harmless. The decaying leviathan has enough gas in its guts from decomposition to form a makeshift atmosphere, and so tyranid organisms occasionally arise from within the bowels of the dead monster and have to be cleared out in order for research to be conducted safely. Some tyranids will occasionally escape from the hive ship and try to survive on the moon’s surface. All tyranid lifeforms can survive in vacuum for a short period of time, but even the hardiest tyranid organisms will deplete their oxygen reserves and die after prolonged periods of activity in hard vacuum. Therefore, the Inquisition maintains a constant security force around the Hive Ship at all times. However, the ships reserve carnifexes and hive tyrants were all killed off centuries ago, and the ship only has enough biomass to spare for small tyranid organisms, such as hormagaunts and termagaunts. Over the years, the tyranid organisms that emerge from the hive ship have been able to survive longer and longer in hard vacuum, but so far none have been able to evolve a complete independence from the oxygen that all organisms need.

One of the first things the Ordo Xenos did when it claimed the hive ship was try to determine its age. First, they tried to determine the age of the tyranid hive ship via carbon dating. It failed. It was only when the research team realized that if the tyranids were eating planets, they had to have been taking up radioactive isotopes from the organisms and crust of the planet they were eating, and so it should be possible to use dating methods more typically used for ancient rocks on the hive ship.

The analysis determined that the hive ship, as in that hive ship in particular, was over five million years old. The margin of error for said age estimate was older than human civilization.