Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loud Whispers]

Genestealers could probably infect one of those edgy loner eldar that range by themselves

[spazyak]

So an edar genestealer would be a psychic glass canon?

[Grim Portent]

Genestealers could probably infect one of those edgy loner eldar that range by themselves

Even they travel in small groups, and who would it breed with? The moment it went near a Corsair, Exodite or Craftworld Eldar they'd notice that something was up, even if they weren't a full blown psyker who could specifically tell what was wrong. It's the same problem as infecting someone who's sterile, there's no way to get hybrids out of the infected person.

To get Eldar hybrids the 'stealers need to infect an entire group at once and then keep them safe and supplied while they form the cult somewhere with no other Eldar around, which would defeat the point of the cult in the first place.

So anbeldar genestealer would be a psychic glass canon?

Eldar are as tough as humans, so no. It would be as durable as a normal hybrid, which is a tiny amount more than a human. It would however be faster, more psychic and possibly more intelligent though

[Tack]

I dunno, I feel like a genestealer cult could infect a colony of exodites... But I doubt they'd survive contact with a craftworld thereafter..

[Grim Portent]

I dunno, I feel like a genestealer cult could infect a colony of exodites... But I doubt they'd survive contact with a craftworld thereafter..

Exodites are if anything more psychic than Craftworlders, their psykers literally control an entire planet with their rituals and meditation. They'd sense the infection fast, and then dinosaurs, laser fire and possibly even dragons, earthquakes and volcanoes are going to start scouring the world of the infection. The World Spirit would know something was wrong, and they're usually described as dragons, slow to rouse, quick to anger and terrible in their wrath.

[Tack]

I thought that was only crone worlds, and those are all in the eye

[Grim Portent]

I thought that was only crone worlds, and those are all in the eye

Maiden Worlds are the ones Exodites live on and have a World Spirit. They also tend to be covered in dinosaurs.

Crone Worlds are the dead worlds that formed the heart of the old Eldar Empire. They're all daemon haunted hellscapes of one sort or another on which nothing lives but the servants of Chaos and the ghosts of the Eldar tormented by Slaanesh.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Dinosaurs that pee heroin!

...oh, no, that's Exalted. Though that's also something the Eldar would do, the decadent bastards.

[TempAcc]

Pretty sure there must be at least some homunculi that do that for a living. And while genestealer can infect eldar, its really hard to actualy hide in a society in which the average joe is an active psyker, and infecting one of the lone eldar ranger guys is pretty useless for a genestealer, since their goal is to form cults, and eldar would be pretty suspicious seeing one that took the path of the ranger suddenly come back with an extra bulbous head and a strange aura.

Which is kinda similar as to why genestealers rarely ever manage to infect orks. Orks are generally pretty damn good at telling orky things apart from non orky things, and then murdering said non orky things, and ork-stealers prob fall under the category of non orky things.

[Grim Portent]

Old-canon for Ork-Hybrids was that they were seen as Oddboyz of their own sort and kept on the edges of society like Weirdboyz and Burnaboyz. At least until enough hybrid spores were around and Orks were infected and enthralled that the cult outnumbered the normal boyz.

As of GCs they can apparently grow to be great enough in number to build and crew Gargants, which is impressive, and be powerful enough to fight the uninfected Orks and Imperial Guard at the same time.

Important to note that at least in the current canon cults go in cycles, each composed of 5 generations of hybrids and the infected humans who start the chain.

Patriarch infects a victim, who becomes a thrall, then it goes:

Thrall>Gen 1>Gen 2>Gen 3>Gen 4>Purestrains

then it loops back around as the Purestrains make more thralls and the Patriarch evolves into a giant monster as he soaks in the accumulated psychic might of the cult.

Most cults apparently go through 4 or 5 cycles before rebelling, though they do a lot of smaller scale fighting before that point. Killing gangs, overtaking mining bases and factories, then just working in them and paying their taxes. Hybrids usually make better citizens than actual humans do. 

It's also impossible to tell on sight who's a thrall, they're still the original race, they just make alien babies and are part of the broodmind, which compels them to worship the Patriarch as a god and the genestealers as saints.


It's actually kind of tragic when the Tyranids arrive and the 'stealers turn on their families. The cultists at least genuinely feel a loving bond with their purestrain family members, and it's implied they might feel something back since even the early gens who're more 'stealer than man have feelings. Purestrains often get painted with religious symbols by their mothers and fathers before going into battle and for special occasions.

There's a little story snippet in the codex where a 4th gen is trying to lead his squad to help the Patriarch, who is fighting alongside the forces of a Hive Fleet at this point, and is headed off by his own purestrain son, and he of course is happy to see his kid, until it rips his head off in the blink of an eye and slaughters his unit because it's part of the Hive Mind now rather than the Brood Mind.

[Loud Whispers]

That's a pretty awesome story idea

[Grim Portent]

'Praise be!' cried Sebathren, raising his shaking arms to Locum's heavens. 'The Star Children deliver us!'

He could hardly believe it. In his heart, he had always known that the Grandfather's truth would burn away the tissue of lies that suffocated the hated Imperium. Still, to lay eyes upon the Star Children themselves was something else. The Neophytes had long talked of what they would look like, these creatures wholly free from human weakness. None of them had expected there to be quite so many. Crashing, stampeding, sprinting across the lands came a purple and white swarm. It made those of Locum's harvest-storm locusts look thin by comparison. Sebathren saw monsters in there, towering above even the Aegis guns of the Imperial Guard. The Patriarch was darting amongst them, dwarfed by a vomiting horror that spewed it's guts into an artillery redoubt. His brood followed close behind.

'Wait for us, Grandfather!' shouted Sebathren, vaulting over the sandbag barricades of his position to skid and scramble down the hill towards the swarm. 'Let your children aid you!' A Genestealer darted from behind a shattered statue, the warpaint that Sebathren had carefully applied to it's carapace smudged. 'My son!' smiled Sebathren. Then the creature darted forward, and ripped Sebathren's head from his neck.

That and some other bits in the codex made me genuinely intrigued by the idea of a Genestealer Cult RPG. Normally the cult is used as one of the ultimate boogeymen in the RPGs, but they are fundamentally similar to the Imperial Creed or Mechanicus, and unlike them they have little to no internal strife or rivalry.

[Loud Whispers]

I like the idea of a Genestealer Cult RPG running something like the Evil Cult simulator with more depth. The goal is infiltrate society and spread your influence, whilst gradually gaining enough resource to bring about the end times via nidpocalypse. All the while you'll be competing with the technoheretic cultists, chaos cultists, corrupt governors, inquisition and so on

I wonder if it is possible for sentimental cultists to get jaded or converted back to the imperium in some nominal fashion by ordo xenos experiments, or in some manner avoid being reconstituted by the hive fleet upon dinner time, in the same manner that an infected psyker might be sent from world to world in advance of the swarm as they're more useful as an operator than as nutrition. IIRC there's one case where a spehss mahrin librarian got stuck on a hive ship and was essentially propositioned to become something "new," probably in some Kerrigan-esque fashion, but the spehss mahrin says no and gets digested instead. So the Hive mind is certainly pursuing lines of thought where it utilizes psychic races in manners that aren't entirely conventional

[nenjin]

'Praise be!' cried Sebathren, raising his shaking arms to Locum's heavens. 'The Star Children deliver us!'
That and some other bits in the codex made me genuinely intrigued by the idea of a Genestealer Cult RPG. Normally the cult is used as one of the ultimate boogeymen in the RPGs, but they are fundamentally similar to the Imperial Creed or Mechanicus, and unlike them they have little to no internal strife or rivalry.

Not quite. There's an older 40k short story compilation, one of which is about a 2nd or 3rd gen hybrid whose master is really an inquisitor. It exposes the internal strife of some cults where older magisters wield more power than newer ones, their willingness to pursue "the plan" rather than wait around for the hive fleet to show up, etc and so forth.

So while they certainly have less internal strife than pretty much any Imperial organization, they're not without their own internal politics. Love and worship of the Genestealer Patriarch does not in fact stop them from hating and being suspicious of each other.

[Grim Portent]

No cultist has ever left a cult, they're genetically predispositioned to worship the Patriarch, and the Broodmind gives them an empathic and telepathic link to one another that goes beyond any bond a normal human can feel which makes them actually worship for reasons beyond mere compulsion. If they do try and leave the Patriarch and Magus will sense it and dominate them remotely into stopping and coming back so they can deal with it. If you could free one from the Brood Mind it would just be an incredibly alien human in mentality, but any children they had would still be hybrids or purestrains and would just enthrall them all over again.

On the other hand the cults send out hybrids, thralls and purestrains all the time, so one cult gradually spreads out over time, sometimes becoming multiple cults, sometimes all remain part of one cult. Once the Tyranids arrive they eat the whole cult, but may let a few genestealer purestrains escape on refugee ships or go dormant on the dead planet to propagate the infection to new worlds. Usually everyone dies though, the cult just dies after everyone else has.

'Praise be!' cried Sebathren, raising his shaking arms to Locum's heavens. 'The Star Children deliver us!'
That and some other bits in the codex made me genuinely intrigued by the idea of a Genestealer Cult RPG. Normally the cult is used as one of the ultimate boogeymen in the RPGs, but they are fundamentally similar to the Imperial Creed or Mechanicus, and unlike them they have little to no internal strife or rivalry.

Not quite. There's an older 40k short story compilation, one of which is about a 2nd or 3rd gen hybrid whose master is really an inquisitor. It exposes the internal strife of some cults where older magisters wield more power than newer ones, their willingness to pursue "the plan" rather than wait around for the hive fleet to show up, etc and so forth.

So while they certainly have less internal strife than pretty much any Imperial organization, they're not without their own internal politics. Love and worship of the Genestealer Patriarch does not in fact stop them from hating and being suspicious of each other.

I think that would no longer apply, newcanon Magi have less free will, being more directly subject to the Patriarch's will. They're more like Hive Tyrants now in that respect, each has a personality, but they only act to further the Patriarch's will now.

It's also implied heavily that each cycle can only have one Magus in it, and even then only if they can find psykers to infect and cross with gen 4s.