Maître d'Essaim Genestealer
Genestealers are terrifying close combat horrors with the
individual strength and speed to tear apart even an armoured
Space Marine if they can get close enough to land a telling
blow. They stand almost six feet in height, even hunched over
as they are on hind legs, their four arms ending in claws, talons
or other bio-weapons capable of cutting through ceramite
and plasteel with equal ease. Cunning and independent,
Genestealers are also one of the few Tyranid creatures which
can exist away from the nurturing and controlling influence
of the Hive Mind, using their own innate intelligence and
brood telepathy to form tight-knit groups. These groups can
survive for decades or even centuries on worlds, hiding their
presence and infecting more and more of the population until
the time to strike arrives, usually coinciding with the arrival
of the hive fleet and the wholesale invasion and consumption
of the world itself.
Few Tyranid creatures have earned such a terrible
reputation or caused as much damage to the Imperium as the
Genestealer. Detected long before the first tendrils of the hive
fleets reached the galaxy, they were thought to be little more
than another unusual and deadly alien xeno-form. It was
only after the horrors of Behemoth and Leviathan that the
Imperium came to realise their true purpose as advanced
scouts for the Hive Mind and infiltrators of the most insidious
kind. Hiding away on void ships and in the depths of space
hulks, the Genestealer menace has travelled across the length
and breadth of the Imperium of Man, seeding themselves
onto worlds and subverting their populations. This perhaps is
the greatest horror the Genestealers bring, as they can infect
almost any life form with a “kiss,” implanting some of their
own genetic material into the host and taking complete control
of it. When the host gives birth to offspring, these carry with
them the Genestealer’s genes and over a few generations a
new Genestealer is born, albeit with some genetic traits
taken from its host—such as the human-like hands many
Genestealers encountered in the Imperium possess.
Purestrain Genestealers are Genestealers which have been
spawned not through the process of infecting hosts but
rather by the hive ships themselves in great bio-factories and
birthing vats. Not polluted or altered by “inferior” genetic
material, they are markedly stronger and faster than a normal
Genestealer and possess a wider variety of adaptive biomorphs.
This is intentional, as Purestrain Genestealers are
the creatures from which all other Genestealers are born, and
even a single Purestrain Genestealer can create a vast brood
from a local population given time and enough raw material.
Genetic Ancestor(s)
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
