A teleporter cyst, which serves as the entrance to the Teleporter Worm's network through the Warp on a Tyranid Hive Ship. A bioform that enters the cyst can effectively teleport to anywhere else on the vessel almost instantaneously.
A Teleporter Worm is a biomechanical organism used by Tyranid bioforms to teleport to various locations within one of their Hive Ships.
A Teleporter Worm maintains the majority of its body, as well as most of its internal passages and organs, within the Warp and only the ends of its many hollow feelers exist in realspace. These feelers attach themselves to different parts of a Hive Ship and a cyst grows in the vessel's organic wall where the Teleporter Worm's feelers can burst through.
These cysts essentially serve as the entrances to the Tyranids' biomechanical teleportation system. Tyranid bioforms can enter these cysts and pass through the hollow tubes. Because both the Tyranids and the Teleporter Worm share the Hive Mind, the Hive Mind can direct the bioforms' movement through the Teleporter Worm's body in the Warp to reappear at another point in the Hive Ship.
A token representing the Teleporter Nexus of a Tyranid Hive Ship, which serves as the hub that controls the Teleporter Worm's teleportation system throughout an entire Hive Ship. Damage to this nexus can badly degrade the ability of bio-forms to move quickly around the massive vessel.
The worm's feelers are sensitive to secretions given off by the Tyranid bioforms; if an entity that does not emit the correct secretions enters one of a Hive Ship's teleporter cysts, it is sent directly into one of the Teleporter Worm's many digestive sacs as a security measure. There it is trapped, stranded in the Warp to be slowly consumed by the Teleporter Worm.
The Teleporter Worm's digestive juices are not strong enough to break down armour, so it closes off the sacs containing armour-clad victims, eventually expelling the indigestible mass solar months, years, or even Terran centuries later. Strange xenos relics and invaders of the Hive Ship enclosed in armour of unknown materials and long-dead are occasionally found near a Hive Ship's teleporter cysts.
The Teleporter Nexus is the controlling hub of the teleportation system within the Hive Ship. Like the smaller cysts spread throughout the vessel, its orifices are simply extensions in realspace of the Teleporter Worm. The Teleporter Nexus itself is a very sensitive organ; any damage done to the nexus will cause the vessel's Teleporter Worm to pull back its tentacles into the safety of the Warp. This leaves the teleporter cysts throughout the ship as decaying cancerous growths in the floors and walls of the organic vessel and greatly impedes the ability of bioforms to move around the massive ship.
Sources[]
- Advanced Space Crusade Rulebook (Board Game), pp. 17, 42