This new Tyranid invasion had come without warning and no one could be sure how many planets had fallen to the Tyranid horde already. Hive Fleet Kraken appeared to made up of many sub-fleets which moved to attack worlds across an entire sector simultaneously. The alarming disruption in the warp brought about by the hive fleet's passage had blocked out astropathic communication beyond the besieged systems and warp travel in their vicinity had become dangerously unpredictable. Whole sub-sectors of the Imperium had been swallowed up with almost no clues as to what had happened to them. The handfuls of survivors had fled aboard ships and been flung hundreds of light years off course by the turbulence in the warp. Their chilling accounts of the nightmare advance of the hive fleet formed the bulk of information available to the Imperium.

Tales came of skies turned black over whole continents by clouds of wind blown poison spores. Of hulking monsters that stalked the land, ripping and slashing with murderous claws. Stories of billions of creatures swarming across the face of a world, devouring everything in their path and leaving the planet a wasteland. Whole population centers had been subdued or wiped out in a single night, and those taken alive had envied the dead.

In the Miral system Imperial Guard regiments and Space Marines of the Scythes Chapter still held out against Tyranids which had overrun the lush jungles and plantations of Miral Prime. The Imperial Forces had retreated to a huge rock mesa known locally as the Giant's Coffin where they fought almost daily against raging hordes from the dense jungles below. The jungles themselves had become extraordinarily active since the invasion and only constant defoliation prevented vines and creepers engulfing the defenders' narrow island of rock overnight.

A free captain brought rumors of Lamarno, a feral planet which had come completely under the sway of Genestealers. When a Tyranid hive fleet arrived the fierce tribesmen had calmly boarded the bio-ships to be consumed by their new 'living gods'. He also brought a tale from the giant asteroid-monastery of Salem, telling of how the monks had chosen to poison themselves and their carefully built ecosystem rather than allow their sanctified flesh and bones to be consumed by the advancing Tyranids. Now Salem was nothing more than a gigantic tomb.

Another dedicated merchant captain helped evacuate millions from the mining worlds of Devlan before it was consumed. The extensive system of Sentinel space stations around Devlan delayed the hive fleet long enough for a fleet of giant freighters to escape into space. A company of the Lamenters Chapter of Space Marines held off frenzied attacks by the Tyranids until the last ship was loaded. Left surrounded and cut off, the Lamenters commended their souls to the Emperor and took a heavy toll of the invaders before they were finally overrun.

Yet there seemed to be no refuge even in flight. One giant ore ship fleeing from Devlan with its cargo of refugees arrived at its destination ominously dark and silent. No communication was forthcoming from the vessel and it made an automated landing far from habitation. Those investigating the ship found it to be a slaughterhouse of terror and death when they unsealed it. Men, women and children had been mercilessly butchered in their hundreds, perhaps thousands, it was impossible to tell. The Inquisition suspected a breach of quarantine protocol had allowed some Tyranid organism to get aboard, but nothing could be found, so what it it was and what became of it remained a mystery.

Orbital defences on Graia had held the hive fleet back for a time but the invaders had overrun Graia's single moon. Now every orbit brought a rain of mycetic spores on the planet below, each spore bearing its payload of doom and destruction. Explorators reported discovering a world deep in the Eastern Fringe which had been seeded with Hormagaunts during a Tyranid terror raid decades before. Swarms of the sickle-armed beasts had killed every living thing on the planet and now battled with each other in their unrelenting bloodlust. The Squats had reported attacks by a swarm of hive ships on isolated Homeworlds close to the galactic core, tens of thousands of light years away from the main hive fleet on the south-eastern rim of the galaxy.

Inquisitor Czevak reported that the Eldar craftworld of Iyanden had been subjected to a series of massive Tyranid attacks. The once mighty craftworld had fought off swarm after swarm of attacking hive ships but in doing so its space fleet had been virtually destroyed. Several swarms of Tyranids had reached the craftworld itself and fighting had raged throughout its slender Wraithbone towers and magnificent crystal domes. Now most of the craftworld lay in ruins and four fifths of its people were left dead or dying, a terrible blow to the dwindling Eldar race.