Event · M41
Iyanden Tyranid Invasion
The Iyanden Tyranid Invasion was the assault of Hive Fleet Kraken on the Aeldari craftworld of Iyanden in the forty-first millennium. It is usually dated to 997.M41, although the wider Kraken advance is recorded as reaching the eastern fringe of the galaxy some decades earlier. Iyanden was among the largest craftworlds, and the invasion is remembered as the near-destruction of a civilisation rather than a single battle. Kraken is the Tyranid splinter fleet that had earlier turned away from Ultramar, and its passage across the craftworld’s space is the event’s main link to the Imperial timeline. The Tyranids arrived as a bioform tide that stripped worlds and vessels of biomass, and Iyanden’s living population was too small to hold its own defences. The craftworld therefore relied heavily on its Spirit Host: Wraithguard, Wraithlords and other constructs animated by the souls held in its infinity circuit. The living Aeldari fought beside these constructs, supported by Spirit Seers and Farseers, but casualties among the living are recorded as severe. Accounts differ on the detail of the fighting, and later tradition holds that other craftworlds, Ulthwé among them, sent aid and counsel. The engagement is best read as a defence of the craftworld itself, at the location marked on the Orrery map at Iyanden. Iyanden survived, and the Kraken forces that attacked it were driven off or destroyed. The cost was the loss of most of its living population, a loss the craftworld has not made good. It has since leaned even more on its dead to preserve itself, which is why it is often described as a craftworld of the departed. On the timeline the invasion belongs with the other Kraken campaigns of the later forty-first millennium, and it remains a reference point for how the Aeldari respond to the Great Devourer: by spending their dead to protect a living remnant.
See where Iyanden Tyranid Invasion occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.