| abstract
| - The invasion began 250 standard years after the First Tyrannic War and the destruction of Hive Fleet Behemoth by the Ultramarines on their homeworld of Macragge. An armed presence had been maintained in the galactic southeast, which members of the Imperium's Adeptus Administratum began to question the need for, arguing that Behemoth had been the sum total of the Tyranid race's expansion into the Milky Way Galaxy. When worlds along the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy began to erupt in rebellion, terrorism, riots and sabotage, the same Adepts claimed the people were dissatisfied with living amid an armed camp. The Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus became suspicious of the Adepts' dissent and their downplaying of the situation on the Eastern Fringes, and began an investigation, which established that all of the dissenting Adepts had either come from the southeastern region of the galaxy or had travelled there at some time. This was the only link between the members that could be found, and some had never even met each other. Inquisitors were also deployed from Talasa Prime to investigate the planets of the Ultima Segmentum that were most troubled. Purges were made within the Imperium, especially on Terra, focused on suspected traitors to the Emperor within the Administratum who had had contact with the afflicted regions of the Eastern Fringe. Tens of thousands of suspected traitors were sent to prison colonies and the Imperial Guard's Penal Legions by the Inquisition. Yet, by early 990.M41, Hive Fleet Kraken had already sunk its tendrils into the galaxy, isolating many Imperial worlds before any astropathic warnings could be sent. Hive Fleet Behemoth had fought in a single wave that had advanced across the galaxy as a single organism, but the Kraken was actually a series of smaller, separate Tyranid Hive Fleets that moved to attack many human-settled planets simultaneously. This not only increased the difficulty for the Imperium's defenders in opposing the Hive Fleet, but also increased the area of the Hive Mind's psychic Shadow in the Warp tenfold. Almost overnight, an entire Imperial sector was silenced from Terra, isolated from Astropaths' messages of warning by the potent power of the Hive Mind. Only several months after Hive Fleet Kraken's onslaught had already begun did the first few survivors' accounts of the attacks begin to reach the wider Imperium due to the terrible turbulence in the Warp. Whole planets had been wiped out by the Tyranids in only a few hours and the Imperium of Man once more faced an unimaginable threat.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)