Genestealer Cults thread

>The 5th generation also spawns multiwheeled mechanical offspring, known as cult vehicles.

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>Weeee piggy back rides!

Alternatively

>"Brother Darius?"
>"Yeah?"
>"There's a genestealer on your back."
>"So?"
>"Just sayin'."

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And that's all the new geneart.

Before moving on to the fluff, what do you guys think of the art quality?

Not BAD, but not amazing.

Some of them like and are pretty good IMO, if only because of how they represent the cult.

Are they in Commoragh?

>Starlight glints from a flotilla of celestial bodies, visible as a shoal of dots in the night sky. While these bodies may appear beautiful at first, their surpassing ugliness becomes more evident as they draw close. This is a bio-fleet of the Tyranid race, and it has come not to enlighten, but to devour.

>The cult sees the arrival of this impossible menace as the long-awaited fulfilment of their prophecies. They believe the Patriarch’s kin, unfettered by Humanity’s failings, are here to elevate the faithful and lift them into the light forever. The skies cloud over, thickening with xenos spores as the hive fleet prepares the cult’s world for consumption. Enraptured, the cult’s true believers tell each other that it is always darkest before the dawn. Celebrations and warlike shouts ring through the streets as their devotional frenzy reaches new heights. When the Tyrannocytes rain from the sky like fleshy meteors, the cultists wave their banners high, hoping to attract the attention of the angelic host.

Of the more recent warhammer art, I like it the most. I like some of them but others are still too clean, everything too separated and while stylized, not stylish?

I'll do a short dump of old genestealer cult art. I find the grit of a lot of the older work more evocative.

>As the giant brood-sacs of the bio-ships split open to disgorge shrieking, blade-limbed war beasts, a seed of doubt worms into the minds of the cultists. Still, their belief in the notion of star borne saviours is so ingrained they keep fighting against the wider populace. The Tyranid invaders mass together into a tide of chitin and fang, surging over the lands to cut down or consume the indigenous populations. With the Hive Mind guiding each brood, the Tyranid hordes do not see the cultists as prey; in fact they are ignored at first by the synapse creatures coordinating the attack. For a short and blissful period, cultist and Tyranid fight on the same side. Once their adversaries have been slain, the cultists become eager to embrace their distant relatives in celebration, jubilant that their star-spanning family is at last complete. They walk forward, arms wide, into the seething avalanche of weapon-forms. They too are torn limb from limb. Only then does the true magnitude of the cult’s folly hit home. The mood of the cult swiftly changes from dogged loyalty to panic.

Anyone here able to upload the ePub?

What do you plan on making count as for the freaky Hybrids and full Genestealers?

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>The final revelation comes both from within the cult and without. Those the cultists once adored turn upon them in the worst of all possible betrayals; any who seek succour from the Patriarch instead go to their doom. With its sentience subsumed by the greater Hive Mind, the creature becomes just another Tyranid, another nameless cell in the void-crossing super-organism that wants nothing less than to devour the galaxy. As soon as the planet’s defenders are overcome, the Patriarch and its brood will attack their own, wicked claws punching into close advisors and trusted minions, who die choking on their own disbelief. Those Purestrain Genestealers spawned upon the host planet attack their devoted parents without hesitation, slaughtering them in a flurry of talons and snapping mouths. Those of the cult who somehow survive this grim twist of fate flee as best they can, but they do not get far. The hail of Tyranid spores intensifies, and the planet itself is altered on a molecular level, becoming a noxious hell. Alongside the bodies of the wider populace, the corpses of the cultists are devoured and regurgitated into the acidic digestion pools that bubble upon its surface. There, they are dissolved into a sickening gruel, raw biomass that is sucked up by ribbed capillary towers into the bio-ships above. So it is that the host population and the cult’s parasitic reflection are made whole at last, their bodies mingled in the final act of this apocalyptic tragedy.

So GW wrote down how you can justify gene-cults fighting with and against the Tyranids. Kudos for them.

But is this fluff appropriately grimdark or too grimdark? I always assumed that the cults were too brainwashed to understand what's really going to happen to them.

Not that user but they could underhive mutants that are doing penance for their existence.

Sounds awesome, I wonder if it could be possible for a cult to simply escape their world and remain in the void to act as pirates, assaulting space stations and wandering the galaxy waging guerilla warfare on whatever planet they come across, sometimes they fail and move into the next planet leaving a small contingent to eventually infect it. An Exodus of sorts that is followed by a hive fleet, maybe they are constantly replace patriarchs or magi as they suffer casualties.

A genestealer cult on a Maiden world?

Eldar genestealer cultists confirmed?

Naw, this is appropriately grim dark. I think this is also the old explanation as well.

There's no art of them fighting Necrons is there?

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The Tau are at it again.

Nah, no Necrons mentioned or seen.

Black Templars letting Dorn down AGAIN.

Ork genestealer apparently still a thing.

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Chaos Genestealer Cults confirmed.

The name 'Virgose' would imply that it's populated by humans at present.

They probably didn't want the swarm drawn there simply because they couldn't claim it later if the Tyranids eat it.

oh yeah those.

>THIS IS OUR HIVE CITY WE STARTED OUR CULT FIRST

I guess since there's no one to infect. Just might be interesting if they take over a planet then wake them up by accident.

How'd this guy trade chapters?

Why aren't the marine chapters helping the Deathwatch put down the genestealer uprisings?

>trust me guys this place is totally clean and productive
totally legit, this Aun'ghol

I love the four armed Emperor, do you?

>four armed Emperor
>Not the Skymother

Get outta here you pure-strain human!

So who is your money actually on in this fight?

I love how nonchalant and unimpressed the Marine in the center looks.

>"Please get off, can't you see that I'm trying to concentrate here?"

Not that user, but from the looks of things, I see 3 Genestealer hybrids and only 2 Grotesque, so numerically the Tyranids do have a nice advantage.

Dark Eldar win long term since they can just close off the webway to parts of the city and bio-weapon the shit out of it until they're sure anything inside of it is dead.

If 1v1 the Aberrant has this in the bag because his strength is double the wracks(with the hammer) T4, so no FNP for him.

GSC ePub when?

I'd like it if a few cults had the hive mind actually establish control all the hybrids, and it goes full Jonestown. Enraptured cultists walking to digestion pools singing hymns ("I vow to thee my hivemind, devouring swarm above, entire and whole and perfect, the biomass it loves." "And did those fangs, in ancient times, devour the planets mountains green? and was the holy Swarmlord within the bleeding cities seen?) drinking as much of the fluid as they can manage before their hands and faces dissolve then pitching themselves in as their bellies distend and rupture all the while the agonies of their flesh totally suppressed by the all consuming need to feed themselves to the swarm.

But that's just me.

Actually, that fight seems like it's taking place in a former Imperial building. So it's more likely that the Haemonculus who owns that wrack is just testing his creations out or trying to steal a genestealer for experimenting on.

Agreed, the Tyranids literally built the Genestealers up for this task, makes no sense why they wouldn't put some more insane genetic pre-programming in there to make them compliant in being devoured.

Genestealer cults are sometimes rooted in DNA that arrived thousands of years before the bulk of the swarms. They lose contact with the hive mind over time, and some probably have no allegiance at all at this point. They've become wild animals essentially, like Catachan Devils.

That said, galaxy is a big place so both are perfectly possible if not explicitly stated in the codex.

pretty sure there were mentions of events like that in previous tyranid codexes

Having a bit of variety is nice, though. It's not like genestealer cults should be an exact science, considering how divergent they'll eventually be from the tyranids proper.

>tau maintain their reputation as the Sweden of 40k

Mind if i steal your idea for genestealer cult pirates? Sounds fun as fuck and i like the idea of a cult pretty much seeing the Tyranids start to invade and just think "Well, our job here is done and our reward is that we can leave while they aren't attacking up."

I wanted to do a mostly wonkatated hybrids and that could represent their generations getting all fucked up since they've skipped a part of the cycle. Also wanted to include an Imperial knight and that could be a freeblade they duped into the cult along the way/their source for a ship out of system.

So does anyone have a link to the epub, mobi or pdf?

Maiden worlds are often controlled by non-Eldar. It being a Maiden world just means it was originally created by Eldar.

Good. Lets hope the freaky xeno hybrid abominations continue for years to come.

I think it's not so much that the other chapters didn't respond so much as that they couldn't either bring enough forces to bear in time or not enough of them were close enough to render aid before Leviathan struck.

At least that is my interpretation of it.

I seriously hope you guys don't fight the patriarchy

Are there hybrids infiltrating marines?
could make for nice conversions.

post the epub.

Are those Cadian Cultists?
I thought Genestealers avoided the Eye of Terror.

/pol/ pls go

While it would be cool, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work because the geneseed is incompatible or something along those lines and would most likely hurt the hybrid instead of improving it.

>Walk closer Brother Arthuran, I want to hit them with my knife!

>Shit man, I don't even know this Xeno

Those are dead kabalites at the bottom. There are districts of Commoragh where non-eldar are alowed to come and go to trade or to be mercenaries, prehaps a cult sprung up there or some other slum.

Well, can't imagine that kind of rabble rousing lasts long in the Dark City.

Seems kinda like something the Archons might do intentionally though. Maybe they make better sport in the pits.

What happens if, by pure chance, one of the infected on a planet is also a secret chaos cultist?
I don't really think the chaos gods would like to have their cultists turn their back on them

Well Satan, it would seem that they indeed are.
In fact, some of their faces look vaguely eldar, though since they are using human tech i would say they are human genestealers that just found a webway portal somehow.

>What happens if, by pure chance, one of the infected on a planet is also a secret chaos cultist?

Chaos corrupted cures the genestealer curse.

Looks like a Paul Dainton piece. Nice to see he's still doing art for them from time to time.

It would be the other way around. The Genestealers would become Chaos cultists. Then they stop being genestealers in short order because Chaos tells them to stop.

corruption*

The most likely explanation is that these cults sprung from the Dark Eldar human slave workers.

C'mon, damn it.

Well maybe if they stopped being absolute lunatics, they'd actually get shit done.

Yeah your way of looking at it is way better, and creepier even. It's much better than "everyone got scared because their angels were actually the demons all along, and everyone died no matter what"

youtube.com/watch?v=LdDXMG9jvwg

Truly nature is a marvelous thing

>File: gene 2.png (6.16 MB, 1748x1716)
> that art

Jesus

>the return of creative art and presentation

I like it!

Funny, I don't think I've ever seen THIS moment represented in art before. Odd, since it's the end-game of every gene-stealer cult.

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>The cult discovers the true meaning of parasitism and horror

What do they mean by this?

The Bladed Cog flag is just North Korea.

something chaoswank something

probably nurglings and plague drones

>Making a faction lose in their own codex

For what purpose?

At any rate, it would be interesting to imagine how the corrupted genestealer cult would look like.

>losing in their own codex

Well, they ARE tyranids

Because Chaos Genestealers is where the fucking name Genestealer Cults originally came from.

Originally they were Genestealer Clans, and only when they fell to chaos did they become Cults, but the name stuck for later versions.

It has to happen at least once in new fluff.

Nice to see the cults fighting other things that the imperials.

Cadia-pattern gear is the most widespread in the Imperium.

The cult is full of totally rad characters with '80s googles.

Genestealer cults seem very promising. The models look cool, and it seem like it'd be pretty fun to play, even if not particularly competitive (they seem to have a few nice gimmicks, but overall are very fragile). Mutant Communist Esoteric Order of Dagon Miners are definitely on the list of armies I'd get if I had the time and money (I'd also paint them to match the look of actual mine and construction workers and equipment, complete with bright yellow or orange pain jobs on all the trucks and bulldozers).

Genestealer cults also made me realise I really should like Tyranids. They seem like they should be right up my alley, but for some reason they're not. I think it's partly because of their look being pretty dissapointing. Fluffwise, each 'nid organism is effective a single cell in an interstellar super-organism, and is more like a biological machine created for a specific purpose than a natural organism. Some fluff makes the Tyranids sound downright Lovecraftian, even mentioning that they aren't even made from biological matter as we normally understand it.
With all that, I'd expect something a lot weirder and gribblier than a horde of ugly six-limbed armour-plated dinosaurs wielding organic-looking guns and swords. There's some cool designs, like the genestealers, the lictor, and the malanthrope, but overall most 'nids are insufficiently gribbly.

Genestealer cults, on the other hand, focus on the genestealers, which are more interesting to me in look and fluff, and have more of the weird esoteric cult thing going on. Tyranids work better for me when they're the eldritch "star gods" or "great devourer" worshipped by mad hybrid cultists, rather than an army of hungry dinobugs that get shot to pieces by Space Marines because their codex is terrible.

nids would just abandon the sector. they learned pretty fast not to put their tentacles into tomb-worlds.

"This world is clean!"
>"Uh excuse me, Etheral, what are those ridges on your forehead above your control pheromone dispens... Er... Forhead gem?"
Nothing to worry about, world is clean
>Why is your skin a really purple like shade
Thats racism
>whats that gold spiral thing
Never you mind

>clean